The Bronze Key
by Willofthewisp
Summary: Secrets, intrigue, romances, and a very small, very dangerous key determine the destinies of Sarah, and the entire Underground as she knows it, from every goblin to the one king she was never able to forget. JS. COMPLETE!
1. Who Will You Run To

The Key

Sarah coughed and cleared her throat, pushing the now-emptied cart back to the library workroom. Just two hours before, books of all varieties lay double-stacked, just waiting for the most inconvenient moment to topple to the floor. She didn't typically cough anywhere other than work, shelving the books all day, some of which boasted crisp ivory pages and battle scars on the leather-bound covers. But she had chosen an older college for that reason. The dust causing her to cough may have been only in her mind, but she stifled another cough crossing into the workroom.

Two more full carts awaited her. Without another page working with her this evening, she wouldn't be able to take care of both before closing. Only one librarian and two clerks were on duty for the night.

"Sarah, phone!" Ruby called to her from the clerk's desk.

"Got it!" she yelled back. She often considered being a clerk, checking out people's books rather than putting them away when they were done with them. But she chose the library as her work study for the sole purpose of access to books, intimate access to books she could skim within the safety of the shelves that towered over her.

"Hello?"

"Sarah."

Her already fair face paled.

"Sarah? Are you there?"

"Mom?" Hundreds of movie-goers would have shrieked knowing Danielle Williams, well, Danielle Watson if one didn't bother to research her actual name, called them.

"Hi, sweetheart."

It was the same voice that called her down to breakfast ten years ago, the same voice that always laughed about picking up and taking her talents elsewhere, to a place where the masses could appreciate them.

"What do you want?"

"Look, honey, I know it's been a long time, but your dad told me I could reach you here."

That must have been an invigorating conversation, she thought.

"I need you to come to my hotel room. I'm in town."

Years ago, Sarah received postcards from a wide array of locales, mostly just mentioning the off-Broadway shows Danielle had bit parts in, no room to ask how school or friends or how Sarah's own progress in the school plays were going.

"Why?"

"Please. I need to see you in person. Your, your dad knows where you'll be. Call him if you don't believe me."

"I've never believed you," Sarah growled, every fiber of the rational, adult half of her mind urging her to hang up the phone and take one of the two carts out.

"Sarah," the voice on the other end uttered with defeat, "this is too delicate a matter. Please. I'm at the Inn down on Maple."

"Hold on." Sarah placed the phone on the desk. Only a handful of reasons ever entered her mind to leave work early. Her research…and her own personal pleasure, depended on the library. She walked over to the librarian's desk.

"Meredith, I need to go home. My…Karen says it's an emergency."

"Guess I wouldn't hear the end of it if I said no," Meredith said with pursed lips. Every time they butted heads on anything, Sarah remembered, those dry lips that folded in like a toad's pursed out, waiting for a gullible princess to kiss them.

"Thanks. I'll take more hours next week." Without waiting for the fare-thee-well she knew would never be uttered, she ran back into the workroom for her jacket and latest piles of texts helping her translate ancient Celtic into English. Her mind, the childlike one, formed all the delicate matters her mother would want to discuss. "Sarah, I'm getting married." Sarah, I need you to hang onto this gun for me until the police stop looking. Sarah, while finally clawing my way up to Ballerina Number 4 in _The Phantom of the Opera_, I was fired and want you to help me borrow some money from Toby's savings bond."

Outside while she drove, the purple mistiness of evening began to give sway to the blackness that the sun slowly but surely hid from. The snow white purity of the exterior of the inn seemed inappropriate to Sarah, at least with the great Danielle Watson, the up-and-coming Cinderella story of Broadway and Hollywood, inside. None of the Williams family watched her movies, all three of them, which Sarah sometimes regretted because two of them looked appealing.

She knocked on 363 and waited. A typical answer would be no one there. But her mother seemed so desperate. Surely she would be here.

"Sarah!" Danielle threw her long, tan arms around her. "Come inside!"

Bags lay scattered about the suite, a few emptied bottles that once held vodka sat on top of the dresser.

"If it's so important, why isn't anyone else here? Why isn't Dad here?"

"Well," she coughed, sitting on the bed. "Sit down. It involves only you. You're an adult now, college. Double English and…"

"History."

"History. Parties. Boys. You must be used to not telling your dad things."

"I'm not really one for girl talk." Sarah rose, but sat back down upon seeing the face next to her.

"You've gotten so pretty, but you've always been pretty." Danielle fingered a lock of thick jet black hair Sarah grew to her mid-back. "I wanted to tell you in person. Your real mother is here."

A/N: Thank you. I do not own the original Labyrinth characters or plot, but there are some original characters in this fic. Please review after reading. And maybe someone will be able to guess what will happen far into the future of this fic...it is Labyrinth. Anything can happen.


	2. Lady in Red

"What?" The neon-green luggage recalled all the loathsome sights and smells ever to come her way. The floor suddenly seemed the best place to look. That's it. Put your head between your knees.

"I'm not your mother, Sarah, not that I ever was much of one, but, well, once I met her, it all made sense. I knew you were something special."

"Is, is Dad not my real dad?" she asked. Tiny clouds encircled her vision, the room growing dark. She could feel herself bobbing forward.

"Sarah, don't pass out on me. No, your dad isn't your real dad. We found you. It was something right out of one of your fairy tales. We were just at home one night, hadn't been married very long. It was close to eleven at night. There was one single loud knock at the front door. You know no one gets visitors that late.

"Your dad looked through the peep hole, but didn't see anyone. Oh, I remember it so well, just so, so vivid. We opened the door and there you were in a little white basket, just a little newborn wrapped up in the softest blankets you could imagine. We hadn't seen anything like you, so, so, your eyes. They're brilliant now, but when you were a baby. All we could find on you was a note that said 'take care of her.' How could we say no to that? I picked you up and at that second, it was as if you were always mine. I put you in your father's arms and he felt the same way."

Sarah's eyes stung with swelling tears begging to fall. She shook her head at no particular voice or question. I wish, she thought to herself, but stopped. Never, every say the words "I wish."

"Say something."

"How could you not tell me?" she whimpered, curling into herself. The tears fell freely once her face was covered.

"Sarah, you were ours! We said we would care for you and be your parents. I didn't know then my marriage wouldn't work out. What sense was there in telling you that you had been just left at our door? We didn't have any name, no clue at all."

All her life, she had pretended she was someone else, somewhere else, battling the unknown to finally overcome whatever quest she had to complete. Perhaps Beowulf had left Grendel only half-dead and it was up to her to finish the task. Or maybe it was a psychological battle and she had to dissuade Frodo from keeping the One Ring for himself. Or maybe after some bad luck with a scaly dragon with paper-like wings, she traded places with Rapunzel and had to wait and entertain her mind in a tower until someone, someone of royal blood, came for her.

"All those times I wished you would come back," Sarah said, "all those times I knew this wasn't my life, that there had been some twist of fate somewhere, you weren't my mother!" She wanted to take Danielle's swan-like neck and wring the head right off. "All those times I went out to that park and made up a story for myself you never bothered to tell me I was a, a foundling?"

"Lower your voice. Please."

"No! You can't tell me to do anything. You're not my mother. You never were my mother. You were entrusted with a baby and you left it! You forgot about it so you could go be selfish and live in a fake world the rest of your life!" The words pounded hard on Sarah, a sickening blow to her gut. She fell over onto the bed and sobbed.

"Sarah." She could feel her mother, no, an unfortunate acquaintance, stroking her hair. "Your hair's so soft. You have to understand. We thought that was what would be best for you. And it was, wasn't it? You did well in school, had some friends, graduated. Do you really regret anything about your life?"

Sarah dared not answer the begging questions that gnawed at her for the last seven years. Not regrets, necessarily, but images as vague as a distant song of another route her life could have taken.

"I was leaving California for a little vacation time and I ran into this gorgeous woman. She looks so much like you. Now, you don't have to meet her if you don't want to."

"She's here?" Sarah asked, wiping her eyes. Great, she thought, another chance to be hurt by a woman who abandoned her. "So, my birthday?"

"The day we found you. I'm sorry. Maybe we should have told you. But where would you have looked for her?"

"In the next room, it seems," she said. She continued to wipe her eyes as she sat up, inhaling deeply. Your mother, Danielle, is being honest with you for once. "I'd like to meet her."

Danielle took her hand and led her out the door to the next suite. Another rich, distant mom, Sarah tried to laugh to herself. Will wonders ever cease?

"She's really beautiful, Sarah. And, sweetie," Danielle stopped outside the door in mid-knock. "I just want to tell you, about your stories, you were right."

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe you don't remember, but when you were little, you would go out to the park and pretend it was the garden of some magical castle. If, well, if anyone ever tells you that doing that was stupid, you can tell them you were right."

Before Sarah could raise a thick eyebrow to Danielle's ramblings which were flakier than usual, the door opened on its own.

The two women walked into a suite identical to Danielle's except that hardly a mini bottle of shampoo was out of place. On the bed, a woman clad in a gown so red it reminded Sarah of fresh cranberries cocked her head slightly and smiled at them. Sarah's eyes went wide. The tall, thin frame covered in rich cranberry beauty stood, revealing an unblemished face framed by layered black hair that fell around her shoulders like a lion's mane. The piercing eyes filled with emotion overwhelmed Sarah.

This woman was a goblin.

A/N: Once again, I do not own the original Labyrinth characters, plot line, revealing crotches, or campy but catchy 80s songs. Oh, a free cyber pat on the back to the first who can remind me what the names of the creepy things that dance and take off their heads are. Not that they're going to be prominent, but I just can't remember. Special thanks to all those who have read and please leave reviews.


	3. Losing My Religion

Three years prior…

_"You sent for me, my lady?" Sir Didymus said, bowing before her as he always did. _

_"Yes, Sir Didymus," she said, sitting with her back more erect than ever. Her hands lay folded in her lap. "I have a very important job for you, one I only trust you to do." Seeing him puff up with pride gave her stomach an uneasy, churning feeling. "I need you to tell Ludo and Hoggle that I won't be calling on any of you anymore."_

_"But, but why?" Sir Didymus sputtered. _

_"Toby was sick a few weeks ago."_

_"Ah, yes, Master Toby does seem to be a frail child, but I'm sure his spirit is equal to that of any giant."_

_"It's like this, Sir Didymus. We all thought he would die. We were told there was nothing that could be done." She took hold of the little Yorkie's shoulders. "I caught myself saying 'I wish.' I promised myself I would never, ever use those words again. It was torture for everyone, and I thought for one stupid second that…it's made it so seeing all of you just brings bad memories. It makes me think things I shouldn't. It's not you, none of you." She held her head in her hands, unable to look into the eyes that reminded her so much of Merlin._

_"I understand, Lady Sarah." He patted her hand. "The last thing any of us want to cause you is sorrow. But, maiden, just in case…"_

_He let her pet him at the base of his ear, a place he often designated as "too dignified" for paltry signs of affection._

_"Lady Sarah," he told her, "though of common blood, your uncommon valor and kindness have stolen your comrades' hearts, and though we will be separated, know that you will always be my queen."_

Sarah reread those last words she wrote down soon after he left her for good. The pocket-sized crimson book she never read anymore held the note with the most flattering compliment she ever received between its front cover and the first page. She couldn't turn any of the pages.

Sarah mused on all the events that occurred after Danielle checked out of her room. Garnet, the woman's name, was actually quite kind, soft-spoken and shy, but polite and nowhere near condescending. She had seemed humbled to be in Sarah's presence. Dubious at first, Sarah asked for proof. It was easy to believe her parents weren't her parents, but to believe she was part of that species, that dark mischievous species that took a sadistic pleasure in breaking people's dishes and stealing their babies was just too much.

"You have a scar on the top of your foot, your left one there. It's long."

Sarah's jaw had dropped. She never took her shoes off in front of people, practically phobic about showing anyone her feet. She described the basket and blankets and the handwriting of the note in such detail Danielle almost burst into tears even though Sarah was sure the two of them had gone over this information before.

It all made sense, Sarah thought, when she had time to calm down and think. Baby pictures were displayed all throughout the Williams' house, but not even in her baby book did she ever see a sonogram. There was never a comment of, "when your mom was pregnant with you." She didn't even look like Danielle, a tall redhead who recently chopped off her long, curly locks in favor of a spiky, Annie Lennox look. She never thought she looked like Dad either.

Later, Garnet asked to be taken to meet her family.

"What do you do?" Sarah asked her at the dining room table of the Williams' house. Toby couldn't take his eyes off her, and her father and Karen accepted Garnet after she produced several crystals revealing images of Sarah taking her first steps, wearing her lavender bridesmaid dress as she pretended to welcome Karen into their family. After making offer after offer to repay them for taking such good care of her daughter, Garnet refused to take no for an answer and fixed their creaky kitchen drawer with a wave of her hand.

"I'm a general in the goblin army, the only woman."

"Does that get lonely?" Toby asked.

"Only when I want some intelligent conversation!" Garnet joked, sharing a superior laugh with Karen. Sarah could hardly believe how easily the three adults were getting along, all so eager to hear about each other's careers and hobbies.

"Can you change into an animal?" Toby finally asked, grinning at Sarah.

"What a clever child! How did you know goblins could do that?"

"Sarah told me stories. Can all goblins do it?" Sarah and Toby shared a look.

"I can become a leopard, and yes, most goblins can do it."

Sarah recalled all these things while she lied on her childhood bed, staring up at her ceiling, its texture forever reminding her of a wedding cake.

"Sarah?"

"Come in, Garnet."

"Sarah, I would never ask you to come live with me. Being Aboveground for so long has made you a human. This is your home. But, dearest Sarah, such a pretty name by the way, I would be quite honored if you would come visit me."

"Really?" She paused. "Is it near the castle?"

"Oh no, it's in the country, handed down through Erol's family for centuries. I would very much like to get to know you better, your interests. I watched you at times, but I felt guilty. Do you still act?"

"No, no. I prefer to write now. I'm researching Celtic literature and want to write my own tales in that tradition."

"I have quite a library of traditional tales. Maybe they could inspire you?" She looked at her with such pleading eyes, and goblin eyes cannot lie with the rest of their face.

"Would you tell anyone I was there?"

Garnet tilted her head to see her child looking at the floor. "Well, no, not if you wouldn't want me to. I'm sure your friends would like to see you, though."

"All right. I'll come. But you have to promise not to tell anyone," she said after a long pause.

"Oh! It sounds lovely! I shall take off work. I will return at once to prepare for you. You will love my house, Sarah, I know it."

"Wait!" Sarah gripped the silky red gown before her mother could disappear. "May I invite Toby? He'll beg me and beg me to visit the Underground."

"Of course, my dear! He will be most welcome. He is such good company." Garnet clapped her hands together like a child.

"But, you can't tell anyone we're there, except Hoggle, and Ludo, and Sir Didymus," she laughed at all the exceptions she made to her rule. "You didn't say earlier you wouldn't tell anyone."

"Of course. May I tell my fiancé?"

"Fiance? You never mentioned that." A general with a fiance, Sarah thought. Garnet, although athletic looking, didn't seem to fit the part. But the sword that she wore hidden by her long robe provided more than enough evidence.

"I was focusing on you. Aulis is his name. He is a general also. But he is most kind and will not tell a soul. But I will not say a word if you forbid me to."

"All right. Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus, and Aulis. But no one else, Garnet. Promise."

"You have a power over me too great to say no to you. No one else will know." She kissed Sarah's forehead and faded away.

XXXXX

King Jareth of the goblins sat in his window, letting one leg dangle out and feel the cool wind of the autumn. The little one in his arms, Angela, he thought the screaming older sister called her, finally fell asleep after what seemed like hours of singing to her. A colicky baby, the cruel side of him could understand wishing her away. But sleeping just now, he smirked. Michelle lacked any strength of will to make it halfway through the Labyrinth. He stared out at the starry sky overlooking his gardens, his favorite and yet least favorite time of day. The pressures, the decisions, the sycophancy all left him, but memories replaced them.

"Your highness?"

"What is it, Murk?"

"The girl has given up."

He turned to face the little beady-eyed creature cowering in his room. He handed the baby over to Murk, reminding him once again to mind the little girl's head, and looked back out the window.

"You know the next couple on the list?"

"Yes, your Highness, a respectable carpenter and schoolteacher."

"Very good then." He turned just enough to see the gray face biting his thin lip. "You may laugh if you wish."

"Thank you, sir." Murk let out a hardy guffaw. "Oh, and General Garnet has requested a week of leave."

"A week? Give her two and half days. We will need her presence these next few months, I'm afraid." He frowned at the possibilities of what could happen to all he saw out that window. He took out a crystal and began to spin it, but pocketed it right away. No, he thought. No.

"She is not the one leaking our information, your Highness. I'm sure of it."

"Though it pains me to say it, Murk, I am in full agreement with you. However, with eight generals, all must be present in order to do what I'd like to do to whomever is causing all this uproar."

Yes, he thought. He'd take great pleasure in the cruelty the spy would endure.

A/N: Ah, the meat of the story coming to light. So what does a key have to do with any of this? Everything, dears, everything. Please review. Hmm, I'm trying to think of a trivia question for everyone but drawing a blank. There is more fun to come!


	4. Revolution Calling

Sarah motioned for Toby to hold on tight to Garnet. Her gown seemed to take on a shapeless quality, billowing and unfurling in a wind that came from nowhere. Toby clung to Garnet's waist, his own hair tickling his face. Without even moving, he saw before him a lush emerald field leading up to a stone mansion three stories tall. Toby gasped at the…what had Sarah called them…turrets. Yes, the turrets painted their way up to a gray, cloud-covered sky.

"I apologize it's not the best of weather conditions," Garnet said, holding down her blowing hair with one hand and taking a chain that held a bronze key off her neck. "But at least if it starts to rain we'll be in the middle of a tour of the house." She unlocked the heavy front door. On the other side, a warm foyer greeted them, displaying a family crest among several other painting depicting eras in goblin history.

Sarah couldn't speak. Too many rooms begged to be entered and held her mouth shut. She wandered into a formal dining room, where a walk-in fireplace emerged from the jutting copper-colored stones in the corner.

"Welcome to the home that has housed Erol and his ancestors," Garnet said more to herself. "Sarah?" She peered into the dining room. "This isn't the Labyrinth, Sarah. I don't expect you to wander it alone."

"How did you know about that?"

"All goblins are made aware of who runs the Labyrinth and the babes they run for. But to hear you were the first and only one to defeat it, I found Hoggle to satisfy my curiosity. After he described you, oh, I can't explain what came over me."

Sarah let the matter drop, being led by Garnet through the first floor, not as complicated as she or Toby thought it would be, for a massive ballroom with a pinkish hue occupied most of the downstairs.

"Do you have horses?" he asked, remembering to hold onto the banister while climbing up the carpeted stairs.

"Something like horses, but you should like them. The second floor shouldn't take us long. With few exceptions, it's very dull."

A few rooms with long tables graced bare beige walls.

"They are for meetings," was all Garnet explained, sighing at the rooms. "The library makes up for all the bureaucracy that goes on elsewhere."

Shimmering swords hung on the library's walls above the shelves, contrasting well with the cherry wood walls and furniture.

"Are all these yours?" Sarah asked.

"Some of them. Some were your father's. Erol and I both enjoyed reading so. These books at your disposal while you're here—you too, Toby. Come and I'll show you your rooms." The tour went on until they came to two guest rooms on the top floor.

"For you, Sarah, the sapphire room." Sarah spun in a circle in a bedroom as wide as her entire apartment. The dazzling blues cascaded down the canopied bed and down into a soft rug that nearly reached the edges of the room. An oak armoire set against the wall opposite the bed with a plush armchair gracing each side. Best of all, at least in Sarah's opinion, there was a cushioned ledge at each window big enough for her to sit on and look out. Only more fields and the outlines of a few more country homes gazed back.

"The young mister is all settled, miss," a hunched woman about Hoggle's height croaked, entering the bedroom.

"Sarah, this is Aschenput. She'll be yours and Toby's chambermaid while you're here."

Sarah extended her hand.

"Oh, this is Mr. Hoggle's friend, every bit as sweet as he said!" Aschenput reminded Sarah of a dog too excited about going for a walk to stay still waiting for its harness to be attached. "Tis an honor, miss, truly. A great big honor. Of course we will send messages to Mr. Hoggle and his roommates at once. I know! We shall have a house party. You can teach us your native dances the good Mr. Ludo thought so highly of. What is it, the one like this." Aschenput threw up her chubby arms and made a face, making a few clumsy movements with her little feet. A frown ran over her wrinkled face at the silence, so she added, "He told me the young musician's name. Well, Sir Didymus did anyway. Sir Michael, son of Jack."

"Michael Jackson?" Sarah tried. "Oh, you're doing the Thriller dance."

"That's the one. But I'll tell you, Miss Sarah, at my age, the other one is much better on me bones. I don't know the name of who does this one." Without stopping for breath, Aschenput burst into the Electric Slide.

"I don't think Miss Sarah or Mr. Toby would prefer a party while they're here," Garnet interrupted.

"Just as well, though I will send out the message, madam." She stood on her tiptoes to reach Sarah's ear. "I really don't like strangers seein' me dance, anyhow. Might put inappropriate ideas in their heads." With that, she waddled off.

XXXXX

The next two days passed quickly at Garnet's house. She taught Sarah and Toby Canaperrin, which to Sarah's knowledge, resembled cricket and badminton. Toby, after lunch, grabbed the two of them and taught Garnet basketball using an old bucket and a ball that had to be coaxed into bouncing. Sarah usually saved her marveling at Toby for when he played sports. Three years ago, no one would have dared venture that he would be an athlete when he grew older.

"Ah, I will miss having all day with you," Garnet sighed, pouring herself some water when they went back inside, "but duty calls. Tomorrow it is back to work."

"When do you get done every day?" Toby asked in between bites of a moist, soft piece of brown bread.

"Late afternoon, I'm afraid. The king, and myself, have been worried."

"Worried?" Toby turned to exchange his worried look with Sarah, but she was already halfway up the stairs.

"Oh, nothing that can't be solved at boring meetings." She tapped his shoulder.

XXXXX

Garnet sighed to herself in her carriage. Sarah assured her she and Toby would find plenty to do in the house and on the grounds. Toby mentioned something about finding gifts for his parents, so she would take them to the markets in the evening. A week feels so short, she thought, especially since Sarah was everything Garnet had hoped her child would be. A little uncomfortable at times when others made mention of this world, but it was to be expected. She gave her the key before she left. Hopefully, that was the right thing to do…

XXXXX

"Talk with the chimeras is at an end!" Orion bellowed, pounding his fist on the table.

"If you want to be the one to go to war with an enemy who knows our secrets, I'll say you're the spy, Orion," Lysander answered.

Jareth tried to read the faces of his eight generals. Most of them usually looked at the table surface at these meetings, but a few outspoken ones (case in point, he thought) made their presence all too known. One of them had to be feeling some air of superiority, some smugness at outwitting everyone else. But he rolled his eyes instead. None of them could have achieved such impossibility if they chuckled to themselves as a habit.

"Then we must discover a secret or two about the chimeras. You're very quiet, your Highness. Perhaps you already know some." Garnet could stay perfectly calm when challenging him.

"Perhaps it is because I feel I won't be able to make myself heard over such cattiness some of my underlings display," Jareth said, glaring at Orion and Lysander especially. "We will plan a negotiation, during which we will conduct our own covert mission to discover some secrets." He made sure to look at Garnet for the last bit.

"May I share my sentiments about that, your Highness?" Orion requested, already red in the face.

"Please do." Jareth prepared himself for a laugh. He knew from experience to only half-listen to Orion's opinions since they last well into the subsequent hours if allowed. How the same person could be such an ingenious tactician on the battlefield and yet so dim in peacetime often made Jareth raise an eyebrow. However, Orion was not the first suspect in regards to the spy. His eyes wandered to Garnet, blushing at a secretive smile given to her by Aulis, sitting straight across from her. Apparently, they knew to half-listen to Orion as well. Ever since they announced their engagement, Jareth found most of their romantic whims annoying, but today, he was amused.

"Thank you, Orion. That was diverting but my ruling has gone unchanged. You're all dismissed. Garnet, stay please."

She blushed again, most likely fearing her previous blush would earn her some time in iron-heated shoes or maybe a few devices down in the Labyrinth created by the king himself.

"I want you to be our spy when we travel to see the chimera," he told her. "You'll have to be discreet. Can you do that?"

"Yes, your Highness." She nodded with a general's confidence. "It will be easy since they are an easily distracted species."

"Easy? If it were easy, I would send Hoggle." He waited for her to stop laughing. Garnet was his favorite of his generals, honest, reserved. She had secrets, he knew, but what they were obviously did not interfere with her work. He was actually quite pleased Aulis finally proposed to her. The dark hair, the shimmering eyes—he always liked that look. "You may go. Oh, why did you request a week? You know our time is valuable now."

"Does his Highness fancy me a spy?" she challenged.

"One does wonder what you do in your free time."

"Wondering is an exercise for the brain," she said and exited the castle, her swarthy lower-goblin of a coachman leading two fine furry beasts back to the country.

"Aulis," he called, knowing how the general liked to linger. The ridiculous, but still formidable Aulis tried so hard to read the ancient tapestries hanging on the castle walls.

"Oh! Forgive me, your Highness. I made out a sentence that started, 'in the time of,' and I was so eager to know in the time of what."

"Most likely 'time of a great war.' All eras are marked by their wars. You must understand I need to suspect every general, and when they loiter as you do…"

"Quite so! I would be most happy to gulp down any truth potion or spell you can muster, sir, or be crystaled if that were possible."

It had been Aulis' mission in life before the untold joys of translating ancient writings to find a way to engineer the crystals to be able to watch other goblins. Of course, they showed lower-goblins and humans, but none of that helped upon deducing the chimera learned of their Intelligence via a traitor.

"Why did Garnet request a whole week of leave? There is no holiday approaching."

"Oh, well, I shouldn't say, sir. She didn't want anyone to know. It even had to get approved for me to know."

"I can order you," Jareth whispered in a sing-song voice. "Coerce it out of you. There are only so many bones and teeth in a body. I could make short work of it."

"You force it out of me, sir!" Aulis wailed.

"Did I?" He grinned. No, he never touched the hairs on the heads of anyone as loyal to him as Aulis. No ruler should be that tyrannical. But teasing the poor soul did provide entertainment.

"It's her daughter, your Highness. She had a daughter when she was married to Erol and gave her up. She only wanted to spend time with her while she stayed at her house."

Only Jareth's eyes showed any relief at so natural and harmless an explanation.

"I had no idea. Does she plan to have the daughter live with her?"

"I don't know, sir. These situations always make things a little gray. I haven't even met her yet."

"I must go and pay my respects then." It seemed fitting to be extra kind to Garnet, at least until her job with the chimeras was done. Any incentive for her to not change her mind would be well worth it.

"She's having a small get-together tonight, sir," Aulis said. "Not a large party, more a, a…there's a human word for it…shindig! Such a funny word. I wonder the origin…but it is a few old friends and some of the neighbors."

"So I would be out of place. Is that what you're telling me?" He saw a speechless look of terror on Aulis' face. "You must learn to calm yourself, Aulis. I shall only stop by to bring her daughter a gift."

"Yes, your Highness, a most friendly idea. The little one must not know many here. Am I dismissed then?"

"Go on."

"Sir! Sir!" A pattering of flat lower-goblin feet echoed through the castle hall.

"What is it, Murk?"

"Sir, it's the baby, sir, Jason. He's climbing up the curtains!" The rat-like lower-goblin began pulling on his sparse mauve hairs.

"Twenty baby-sitters and not a brain among you," Jareth muttered to himself, making his way towards the throne room. This time of year it seemed more humans made that fatal wish. Oh well. Tonight would at least provide some peaceful, if not fitting, activity.

A/N: Dun dun dun! Have you figured out yet that the chapter titles were popular songs of the late 80s and early 90s? Just a way to make a conscious effort not to create any anachronisms. If anyone sees anything that wouldn't be said or done in that time, let me know. So...is this going to be the party from heaven or from hell? Find out, next installment!


	5. She's Like the Wind

"I don't like my coat." Toby grimaced, wetting down his hair while standing in Sarah's bathroom.

"Then don't wear it!" She helped him out of his coat and hung it back in his closet. "You should have just told Aschenput you wanted just a blouse."

"Blouse is a girl word. This is, I don't know," he giggled. "A pirate shirt."

"Why don't you wear this with it?" Sarah found a thick belt with diamonds lined in rows all the way around it. She bent down to pull the belt through each of his loops, hearing, "One, two, three and to the fo'/ Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the do'/Ready to make an entrance, so back on up/ Cause you know we 'bout to rip…"

"You shouldn't know that song!" Sarah gasped. "Dad and Karen would never get off my back if they knew you sang that. You like your belt?"

Toby nodded, taking a sword only he could see and waving it around at an equally invisible opponent. "I bet Ludo won't even know it's me."

"Ludo remembers everyone," she said, taking him downstairs. Maybe it was just Ludo's size, but Toby seemed to remember Ludo the best back when the Underground's creatures still came to visit them.

"Sawah!"

Ear-shattering stomps made Garnet, Aulis, and the few guests already assembled jump. Ludo burrowed his enormous head into hers.

"Sawah back!"

"Let her breath, you," a gruff voice muffled from behind Ludo.

"Hoggle!" She grinned like she never had. "Oh, I've missed you! I'm so sorry I didn't give you a proper goodbye!" Sarah picked the little creature up in her arms and kissed his head repeatedly.

"Aw, none of that," he said, wiggling away from her, shaking his blushing head. "And who is this fine fellow? Don't tell me you had a son."

"Hoggle! I'm Toby!" Toby laughed.

"Just teasin' you, kid. You can't mistake those eyes, not in a million years."

"I tell him how pretty his eyes are all the time and you know what he does to me?" Sarah started, feeling no time passed between her and Hoggle at all. "He rolls his eyes and pushes me. Isn't that what you do?" Toby rolled his eyes and pushed her arm.

A few desserts lay out on the table near them, and Sarah watched Hoggle sniff several of them before sampling them, putting whatever he didn't eat into a pocket. She only had her Walkman in her jeans pocket upstairs and if it picked up any radio station in this strange world she'd, well, she'd take a dive off the roof into a trampoline of Jello. Parties always needed music and she was not about to provide it herself. She smoothed the sapphire gown Aschenput laundered just for tonight. After insisting on as simple a dress as possible, she took a liking to this plain, off-the-shoulder creation.

Garnet fluttered between guests, so many of them now, begging to see the humans staying with her. Although Sarah had taken a painstaking amount of time in wiping "I wish" from her thoughts as well as her vocabulary, "She's Like the Wind" blared throughout the first floor of the house.

"Aschenput!" Garnet yelled. "I apologize, Sarah. She must have used your music device to play with some magic."

"Leave it on!" one of her guests cried out.

"Aboveground music is such a refreshing change!" Murmurs of assent changed Garnet's mind. Another knock at the door broke another reassuring kiss from Aulis, but she bustled to the door, her soldier figure sliding past her full ballroom to her foyer.

_She's like the wind through my tree  
She rides the night next to me  
She leads me through moonlight  
Only to burn me with the sun  
She's taken my heart  
But she doesn't know what she's done _

"Your Highness!"

"No need to apologize for not inviting anyone from the castle, Garnet. I came only to give your daughter a welcoming gift." He showed her a small bouquet of flowers from the castle gardens, each one a fiery explosion of orange and red, with tiny white splatters on each heart-shaped petal.

"How beautiful! May I?" He let her hold onto them and take a whiff of them. They would be a safe gift for any girl, no matter how old this daughter was. He glanced around the foyer. Never even entering her house before, he suddenly bit his lip. It would look too forced. She would inquire. She would suspect it was only to entice her into finding out all she could when it came time for her mission.

"Sir, forgive the bold statement…"

"I normally forgive all of them."

"…I assumed you wouldn't want to see her." She closed the door behind him.

"An impossibility."

From the ballroom, Toby saw the latest guest. His eyes squinted. He envied Sarah that her memories of this world were clear while he had just images, snippets from a movie at best. He slid off Ludo's back and gave Ambrosius an absent-minded pat. It wasn't a memory so much as remembering a dream—of being lifted into the air, several times, and whirled around by, by who? Sarah never called him anything when he would ask for the story. She would say "the Goblin King" once and be done with any titles afterwards. Hardly aware of his own legs, he ran into the foyer and threw him arms around the king.

"I thought your fiancé said it was a girl," Jareth said after catching his breath the child knocked out of him. Smiling down, he couldn't see the boy's face. "Quite the hold you have on me."

"Don't injure my leader now," Garnet scolded, giving the boy a light smack on the back. "Running through here like that, you're bound to trip someone. Pardon me, your Highness. Sarah!"

Jareth could not have heard right.

"Sarah?" he repeated, his voice catching.

"Yes. She must not have heard me. Sarah?"

Without choice, he let Toby, because it could not be any other boy, take his hand and pull him into the crowded ballroom. It was an entrance that went rather unnoticed, too many conversations filled the room, sounds of laughing and eating arranged together into a random, cacophonic mess almost drowning out the actual song overhead.

_Feel her breath on my face  
Her body close to me  
Can't look in her eyes  
She's out of my league  
Just a fool to believe  
I have anything she needs  
She's like the wind_

He considered fading away, back to the castle, back to where he could be alone, but yet he remained right where he was. And then he saw her.

Sarah could feel the color abandon her face. Her eyes widened. They were both too frozen to move, to think. Her head snapped down to find a stationary spot on the floor. Her shoulders rising in a deep inhale, she turned and shuffled her way up the side staircase.

"Where does Lady Sarah go without so much as an announcement?" Sir Didymus asked anyone within a limb's reach of him.

"Sarah! Wait!" Toby ran up after her.

"You will have to pardon their lack of upbringing with royalty," Garnet apologized. "They are polite children, well, Sarah is an adult now. In their world they do not live near their rules, I don't think. One might think…sir? Are you all right?"

"Fine. I must leave now."

"You will hold no hard feelings over my wards?" Garnet asked in a sharp tone. "They did not expect to see he who took them from their home so long ago. I will take these up to her," Garnet said, motioning to the fire flowers she still held.

"Anything you like."

He let himself out.

XXXXX

"Sarah?" Toby creaked open her door. Sarah sat at the window seat, staring out at the moon, its complexion matching her drained face. She tucked her bottom lip into her mouth. "I'm sorry if I did something wrong."

"No," she coughed out. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Why are you whispering?"

"I'm whispering?" Sarah finally turned to look at him. "Guess I was."

"Is he bad?" Toby asked, climbing up onto the window seat with her. None of the shrouded memories he had gave any indication of it.

"No, I, I don't know. I don't want to talk about it," she sighed. "I just didn't want to be down there."

"Oh."

"Sarah?" Garnet's voice came from the door. "May I come in?"

"Come on in."

Without the door opening, Garnet wafted through it. "I thought these might add some color to the room." She placed a vase of flowers on top of the armoire. "Dearest Sarah, I promise I did not say a word to those to whom you didn't give me permission, and Aulis just misinterpreted."

"I know. Things get out." She looked up at the pained, gorgeous face. "I was a teenager once, Mom. I understand the rumor mill."

"Did you just call me Mom?" Tears welled in Garnet's large glowing eyes. Their eyes always tell the truth, Sarah remembered. She leaned forward and let her mother wrap her arms around her. She could feel Toby's head nuzzle one of her arms.

"I know what will cheer you up," he said. "Make up a story for me."

"I'll leave you two up here then. I will tell your friends they may come back tomorrow if you would like," Garnet offered. After receiving two contented nods, she went back to her guests.

"A story, huh? Once upon a time, in a far away land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he had everything his heart desired…"

"That's a movie! You can't do a movie!" Toby threw a pillow at her.

"Hey, I can't help it if I memorized it, can I? Fine. You will have a Sarah Williams original. Once upon a time…"

XXXXX

Outside, the being in a form that very much echoed that of a higher-goblin made its way to a shrub near the street.

"Hello, old chap! Care to come in for some tea?"

"Leave us, worm!" The being batted the little worm out of the shrub. It ignored the tiny scream followed by "Ow!"

"Are you there?" the being whispered into the shrub.

"Did you see it?" a voice asked back.

"I did not. The general did not have it."

"I am reconsidering the honor I bestowed upon you," the voice warned.

"I will find it. I told you I'm good at what I do. Tomorrow, the general will not leave her house." The being allowed itself a laugh.

"Tomorrow then," the voice in the shrub purred. "Tomorrow we shall take what we need."

A/N: Wow, a lot of pop culture references in this chapter. I don't own any of the songs mentioned in this story at all, nor do I own the lyrics to "She's Like the Wind," sung by Patrick Swayze. The line Sarah begins her story with is part of the opening line in 1991's "Beauty and the Beast." I also do not own any of the original Labyrinth characters. Please review.


	6. Tears in Heaven

Sarah awoke with what felt like a sledgehammer beating on her forehead. She instantly shut her eyes again and groaned. Not that her sleep replenished anything; every time she had felt her conscious thoughts melting into anything less clear, she turned over and stare up at the ceiling. Trying the same thing while awake only increased the pounding sensation.

"Good morning, Miss Sarah!" Aschenput chirped, interrupting her own incessant humming.

"Good morning," she mumbled. She hated being irritated by such a friendly creature, but that didn't change the fact.

"How are you this morning?" Aschenput took a stack of thick cotton towels and placed them in the correct bathroom drawer.

"Fine. How are you?"

"Bitchin,' miss."

"What?"

"I believe that's human slang for 'cheerful,' miss, is bitchin' unless I misunderstood."

"Oh…okay." Sarah sat up. "Has Garnet already left?"

"Haven't heard a peep from her, miss?"

"What?" Sarah bolted out of her bed and ran down the hall. Every day Garnet left for work she had been out the door before either she or Toby even woke up.

"Garnet?" she called outside the closed door. A short moan answered her. Sarah jerked the knob. The once fair skin Garnet had now faded into a sickening, sallow hue. Sweat beads ran down her face like pearls. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know, my love. I felt so fatigued after you and Toby retired last night. It just grew worse and worse."

"Who can I tell that you can't work today?" Sarah placed her hand on Garnet's head. She never knew anyone could withstand that kind of temperature. Her heart began to race the pounding in her head.

"I must go to work. I can't stay here…" she trailed off.

"You don't look like you can even stand."

"I must go!" Garnet pushed off on her elbows but crumpled back onto the soaked sheets.

"All right, here's what's going to happen," Sarah said, standing back up. "You're going to stay here and I'll just tell whoever you won't be able to go."

"You don't understand. They think…" Garnet's eyes went wide. "Take my place at the castle today. You still have my key?"

"Yes, but…I, I can't go to the castle," she argued.

"Keep the key with you at all times." She clutched Sarah's hand, letting out a small yelp of misery.

"You're staying here either way. I'll be right back." She raced out the door. "Aschenput! Aschenput!"

"Right here, miss."

"Wake up Toby. He's to stay with Madam Garnet today. You're going to make sure they have everything they need."

"Yes, miss," Aschenput said, scurrying into Toby's room.

XXXXX

Pacing in the foyer, she waited for the coachman to bring the carriage around to the front. She wouldn't have guessed goblins could be sick. Did that mean they could…

She noticed the plates of food still out on the long table in the ballroom. Lazy chambermaid, Sarah thought. Cups still lay out, too. She headed into the ballroom, stacking the cups into each other to be taken back to the kitchen. Stopping at one, she spotted a hole in the bottom, as if something had eaten through it. There was no stain anywhere near it, though, so no liquid could have spilled out. Mysterious, Sarah's child brain commented. Anything to distract you from today, the adult half snapped back.

At last the carriage pulled up. Placing the cups on the table, she tucked the chain that held the key into her shirt and stepped out the door.

With no one to talk to the whole duration of the trip, Sarah sang quietly to herself. Maybe she would see Hoggle today. That would be a warm welcome. She refused to glance out and observe the town. The Labyrinth would be visible, she just knew, and she was certainly not going to gawk like a simpering child upon seeing the castle. If only Toby was with her. It was all right for a small child to let his jaw drop and cry out "awesome" without any pride issues at all.

"Will return in the afternoon, or when you call me, miss," the coachman's long arms helped Sarah out of the carriage without moving from his own seat. "Name's Bartlebums and you can just call that out." He turned the carriage around before Sarah could say goodbye.

The castle was not as cold as Sarah remembered it being, more plants out than last time. Of course, she wouldn't have noticed them had they been there anyway. The staircases spiraled up to where she guessed the generals would meet. Elaborate woven tapestries graced the walls, each with a calligraphy hard enough to make out on its own even if she had been able to decipher the language.

"Ancient goblin."

She jumped. A tall (they were all tall, stupid) goblin approached her, skin just as clear and fair as Garnet's.

"General Lysander, fourth brigade. This is not the most interesting or historically significant portion of the castle if you are on a tour."

"I'm here for my mother Garnet," Sarah said, her voice still and fearless. "She's taken ill."

"Ill? Practically a vulgar term here, human." Lysander strolled past her. "I supposed she will be all right?"

"I'm sure. She wanted to come here very badly, so I just thought I'd come and take notes for her."

"A dutiful daughter. I'm sure Garnet trusts you with her life," he said with a yawn, heading into the room. "I hope dear Garnet has taken to her bed?"

"She'll stay there if she knows what's good for her." Sarah stopped at a particular tapestry, one of possibly the Labyrinth, only with several humans running through it, some chained to the walls. A lone man near the center kneeled down, possibly praying, the shape of what was on his garment like a key. It captured her completely, the flourished writing on the garment reminding her of something.

"One would think you wanted to go back in it."

She knew that voice. Year after year went by and it refused to leave her, dwelling in the dreams she never took notice of until she was well alone and in the dark.

"Then it is of the Labyrinth," she breathed. "I'm attending your meeting today," she said, turning to face him. It had never been fear, not really, but it still took an effort to not show any.

"Are you?" Jareth said in an amused tone. "I should hardly live down the gossip of a human sitting in learning this kingdom's secrets."

"Garnet would have gotten out of bed otherwise." Sarah folded her arms. "I'm taking notes for her and will until she's strong enough to come back. Excuse me, please."

He let her pass into the meeting room. It screamed idiocy he had not seen the connection between her and Garnet until told of it. Their appearance, their stubbornness, the imagination both of them closed off until the convenient moments when it could be unleashed in a ferocity more pragmatic souls could barely wield. Of course, Sarah had been just exiting childhood when he knew her and did not mirror Garnet as she did now. Knew her. Exaggerating, aren't we, he shook his head at himself. The arrival of a few straggling generals broke his concentration, and he followed them inside. Sarah sat at the far end of the table, a notebook and pen from the Aboveground just within her reach. Well, he thought, the mission will have to wait and she will just have to be ignored.

"Nomini, you asked to speak first," he addressed his eldest general.

"A bit of conversation we have picked up from the Chimera king, your Highness."

Sarah bit her lip. Chimeras. Never doubt a story is true, she scolded herself.

"Little was distinguishable, sir, apartment from the words 'minotaur' and 'bronze.'"

"Why was no more able to be picked up?" Jareth asked.

"Poor, p-poor translating skills, sir," Nomini stammered. "Our own Intelligence is analyzing it now."

"All two words of it, excellently done," Orion mocked, clapping his hands in an exaggerated fashion. "Your Highness, the mentioning of a monster is bad enough. Declare war on them."

War, Sarah thought, letting the pen drop onto the paper. No wonder Garnet felt the need to be here.

"I'm sure the Sidhe would love that," Lysander argued. "War with the chimeras and then with the Sidhe. We'd be obliterated."

Sara let the ensuing bickering wash over her, writing with great fury every significant word. For a moment, she found her other hand fondling the little key around her neck.

"I'm curious to know what General Aulis thinks," she said to the fidgety figure straight across from her. The silence that entered the room permeated to her cheeks, but she refused to blush. All eyes were on her, but she kept her own on this man her mother planned to marry.

Jareth did not know where to keep his eyes on her as everyone else was or at his general, a heavy shade of scarlet.

"I—it is my opinion, sir." He jerked his head to look at Jareth. "It is my opinion that we should not disregard Intelligence. They've been able to find more information with less than two words before." He took a deep breath and, much to Sarah's surprise, smiled at her.

"Are we really to hold a serious council with some little human, what is she doing, taking notes for her mother?" another general criticized. "Just what's wrong with Garnet anyway?"

"She's sick," Sarah answered, "which I had thought was impossible."

Before the fuming general could object to her again, Jareth raised his voice.

"Sarah, goblins are not immortal creatures, although a great deal less fragile than your kind. Garnet being ill is a rarity, although not unheard of."

"Just what is wrong with her?" General Dibble asked.

Sarah described Garnet's symptoms, the mentioning of them causing some of the faces at the table to lose their luster. The flu-like symptoms now even made Sarah flutter with worry. Aulis jumped from his seat, tipping it to the point where it nearly broke the tension with a swift plummet to the floor.

"Permission to go to her, please."

"Orion, you are in charge until we return. No decisions until then," Jareth said, also rising. Sarah packed up her notebook and hustled out of the room with them. She heard the last bit of Jareth ordering a lower-goblin to bring around a carriage. Both he and Aulis faced her.

"How long has she been this way?" Aulis demanded.

"This morning. She said she really started feeling tired last night but it got bad this morning. Shouldn't we have a doctor, or a healer of some kind come with us?"

They piled into a carriage heading back to the country. Neither answered her question and that frightened her more than anything else. She took out the key, her fingertips tracing the bronze teeth of it. It really was something out of a fairy tale. Maybe it didn't just unlock the house. Maybe it unlocked a cupboard in which she could place her old toys in for them to take on a life of their own, be modern Galateas as it were. Galatea—another story no one thought to be true…

"Why does the Labyrinth not have a minotaur?" she blurted out.

"It did long ago," Jareth answered after some hesitation. "The Labyrinth was originally a human creation."

"I know," she said, harsher than she meant, "but why is the Minotaur not there?"

"Because it is a monster." Jareth raised an eyebrow at her. She had such cleverness about her most of the time, and yet could ask the most basic of questions. "When we acquired the Labyrinth, we were rather repulsed by its original purpose, which was to cage the Minotaur and for its food, the young people of the village, to be trapped inside. We found it and took it and every ruler has added or revamped it to some degree. By the time I took it on, little of the original crude design remained."

"What did you do with the monster?"

"I want you to get it out of your head that I personally did anything with it," he snapped. "The ancient goblins took the Minotaur and put it in a magic cage, locked forever to keep the vicious thing away."

"We don't approve of killing humans, Sarah," Aulis spoke. Sarah had forgotten his presence in spite of the fact he sat right next to her. "We wanted nothing to do with the creature but to keep it away."

"In other words, the cage needed a key," Sarah said, more to herself. No, it was just a house key. Garnet pleaded with her to keep it, but being the key to the house was reason enough for that. She flipped the key over, examining every centimeter of it.

Jareth watched her, seeing the cunning return to her. She'd been pawing a tiny key held around that milky neck of hers. He could tell what she was trying to piece together. But why Garnet would have the key in the first place, a key more likely to be hurled into the Aboveground's vast ocean than entrusted to any goblin, was the question. In addition, it was already a key to the house. He shifted to see out the window, hampered by keeping his focus within the carriage. The house technically did not belong to Garnet. Well, it did, but only because her husband inherited it, a house that had been passed down through Erol's family since…

"Does anyone know how to read this writing here?" Her voice pulled him back into the carriage. "I think this is writing."

"I might, just a little." Aulis took it from her. "It's ancient writing. Give me some time."

"It matches the design on the tapestry," Sarah added.

"Aulis?" Jareth sat up.

"I apologize, sir, for I can only make out one word. Erol."

The moment the carriage came to a halt, Sarah barged out and ran up the thin path to the front door.

"Toby? Garnet?" she screamed. She ran through the dining room and ballroom before sprinting up the stairs.

"Sarah?"

"Toby!" She could hear him. "Where are you? Are you all right?"

"I heard noises and Garnet got up and put me in here." His voice echoed throughout the house. "I can't get out of here!"

Jareth and Aulis followed her up the stairs, their hands on their own swords. With a wave of Jareth's hand, Toby fell from the ceiling, landing on his bottom. He was up in one swift motion and ran to Sarah.

"I was in this room all by myself!" he announced to her, shaking.

"What happened?" She tousled his hair to calm him.

"I was in her room, and we were just talking and we heard a sound. She said someone had gotten into the house. It took her a long time to get out of bed, but she went to see what it was. She ran back in her room where I was, and she put me in a dark room and told me to be quiet. The last thing I saw, she was taking her sword out."

"Garnet tried to fight poisoned?" Aulis spilled out.

"Poisoned?" Sarah repeated.

"The symptoms you described." Aulis paced around the room. "She had to have taken something someone had tampered with."

The cup, Sarah remembered. "Come on!" She grasped Toby's hand and led him back down the stairs. "Garnet! Mom!"

In one of the meeting rooms on the second floor, Sarah found a puddle of blood leading straight to a collapsed Garnet slumped to the floor. A strange sucking sound accompanied every breath she took.

Her sword lay next to her, blood smeared all over it. Close to her lay a motionless body in its own lake of blood with a lion's head in the front and a serpent's head in the back. Most gruesome of all, a bloodied goat's head sprang from the creature's back, one horn hacked away. Only Sarah knelt down over Garnet.

"Sarah?"

"I'm here." Her hand held the back of the goblin's head, allowing her to see what the lion part left of her throat. A chilling, metallic odor vented the room.

"The key?" A shiny ribbon of blood trickled out of Garnet's mouth.

"I have it," Sarah said, "and no one's going to take it from me."

"Take the key," Garnet coughed, her head reeling back in agony, "and kill the thing." Garnet's eyes moved back to Sarah, drinking in the sight of her. "Toby?"

"He's safe," Sarah said through swelling tears. "You protected him."

A faint smile broke out across her face.

"I've always loved you." Her last word barely climbed above a whisper, but it was said. Her eyes lost their focus, and then went still.

"Garnet?" Aulis ran to her and held the body by its shoulders. Sarah could only stare as Aulis burrowed his face into what had been Sarah's mother and wept. She stood, the key safely around her neck.

"You would have been hidden away if you stayed, Sarah." Jareth struggled for words. "In time you might have been found and the chimera would have taken the key and killed you and Toby both."

Toby clung to Jareth, unsure whether to cry or not. He like Garnet, he really had, but the compulsion to throw up was quickly overriding his anguish. Sarah walked past them without a word. Jareth followed her up the stairs and down the hall, fighting the urge to gather her to him and shelter her in his arms. He had fought that for so long, but never at a moment where her humanity seemed stripped away from her, leaving a lost ghost in its place.

"Sarah," was all he could say. She walked noiselessly into her room and closed the door. His fingertips grazed the wood, the only thing blocking him from giving her what comfort he could. Oh, he could go right through it, but the loud, violent sobs finally pouring out of her on the other side of the door convinced him to stay where he was.

A/N: I do not own any of the original Labyrinth characters or story...although I wish I did. Please review.


	7. Dreamlover

Sarah shuffled out of her room and down the stairs into the library, mercifully not seen by anyone. Standing on top of the cherry desk, she scanned the titles of the yellowed tomes, so reminding her of her job back in the "normal" world. She pushed the reminder away, however, finding a large text entitled Linguistics of the Ancient World. Fearing the entire stack would topple down on her, she held the books next to it in place while she prodded it out. It nearly stuck to the book beside it. Hopping off the desk, she opened it up, dodging the dust, and skimmed through, scrambling for any alphabet, any chart of symbols. Her father's name was on this key and this book was in his and her mother's house. It all had to mean something.

She avoided looking out into the hall, possibly making eye contact with the room across the hall. Leaving the, the mess in that room opposed all the refinement that higher-goblins claimed to embody, but she took no chances.

At last a series of symbols caught her eyes in the pages, rimmed in faded gold. The golden ink printed upon the book emphasized the ethereal beauty of the ancient language, and also its complexity. Even so, Sarah willed herself to not even think about wishing her history and English skills to help her. This would take the analytical, puzzle-solving hemisphere of her brain, the one that could reason out what it didn't know as opposed to applying what it did.

She physically touched the symbols on the page before touching the ones engraved on the key. Each swirl, each little mark—every bit of the symbol provided a clue.

"Erol, kingdom…Sidhes," Sarah read out loud, fighting the pressure building on her temples.

XXXXX

"How public should we make this, your Highness?" Aulis asked after sitting perfectly still for an untold amount of time.

"Until the security of this kingdom is preserved," Jareth answered, still looking up at the stairs. Sarah should want to come down by now. They cleared out everything in that room. "We should go to the Sides here in the near future, enlist their help in this matter. War seems imminent now."

"Shall I go back to assemble the generals then, sir?"

"No. No, we will not want our spy to accompany us." The moment the words left him, he reconsidered. "Generals Orion and Lysander may come with us. Leave Nomini in charge."

"Yes, your Highness." Aulis' garments puffed out, miniscule white hairs poking through them as he shrunk. The garments enveloped his shrinking body, taking him all the way down to the floor. A silent Albino mouse scurried from the spot Aulis just recently occupied.

"Well, Toby, it appears…" Jareth began, but Toby lied slumped in his chair, his sleeping head resting on one of his hands. Jareth waved the carpeting to roll up from the floorboards, softening the bristly material into a warm fleece. It unfolded over Toby, a normal blanket as long as the room. He could tug on it and pull it up over him in his sleep and it would never plunge to the ground.

Jareth made his way up the stairs, expecting the harsh, biting words he always came to expect with Sarah. Be fair, he told himself. She's been more than civil considering the circumstances. Fairness—such an equivocal little word. Was it fair to her to feel so unloved by her human mothers only to lose her real one that had actually loved her? Was it fair to her for him to climb up the stairs at all? Yet, his fairness had to be considered, his favorite general dead, his kingdom perhaps waiting to be swallowed up by the chimera and it all involved a little key Sarah hoarded up there, once again in her secret world behind closed doors. He smiled, remembering how easy it had been for him to glimpse into her private little world in her room when she was younger when she threw such tantrums to keep everyone else out. How unfair she had been to everyone then. She'd grown, of course. Humans mature so quickly once their adolescence begins to wane. Still beautiful…she had always been beautiful, at least from his eyes, but now there seemed to be more intelligence, more calculation behind those eyes he never dared look into the last time she came to the Underground.

She was in the library, her brow wrinkled in clear frustration. Much a case in point to his earlier musings, the younger version of her he met would throw down whatever work she had been doing and scoff at how unfair it was for her to do it, finding more enjoyment in her hand-picked subjects of study. But Sarah had grown more facets since she'd last been here, and he felt too eager to explore every one of them.

"You have found something to occupy your time," he said, taking a seat across from her. She looked up, and then looked back down at her paper and text.

"Did you know Erol?"

"Only professionally." He tilted his head to see what gave her so much trouble.

"This key's been passed down his…our family for years," Sarah said, still looking at the key. "The symbols don't really add too much to the meaning, but they mean…I'm still wrapping my head around this…that it changes to the next person in the bloodline when it's handed down. It should say my name on it very soon. You can go back and actually trace the whole line just by the previous names."

"You must go with me and a few of my generals to the Sidhe kingdom," he said. "We will need assistance in seeking justice for what the chimeras have done." He waited for her to respond, to fight the command, but she only flipped through more pages. It did not take magic to see she had stopped reading them. "Aulis will be there, of course, so you may have some family with you, and a few others I believe you have met."

"You want to take the ones you suspect told the chimeras they had found this key," Sarah cut to the chase, finally looking up at him. "That's what this is, isn't it? This key caged the Minotaur and somebody wants it let out. Our family must have built the house afterwards for it to be used against both locks."

"That is the conclusion we came to downstairs. Sarah, I suggest you allow me to take Toby back home."

The thought hadn't entered her mind about what to do with Toby. No thought had entered her mind about just how long she would be here now that, now that circumstances had changed.

"That's fine. He'll just blame me for sending him back anyway." She looked back down at her book when she saw him stand. "Don't you dare wipe his memory."

"The king is not one to be ordered. Do that with the Sidhe and they'll damage more than just your memory," he said with just enough mystery to send her a fright. He had no intention of wiping Toby's memory, but he thought of it now.

"Why would they be mentioned on the key?" she asked, a clear change of tone in her voice.

"Perhaps they helped create it," he suggested. "Do you plan to stay here tonight?"

"I…" she trailed off, glancing around the room and out the window. "Aulis will be here."

"And they've already proven they can kill a higher-goblin in this house." He paused, debating with himself whether or not to go through with it. "There is a place for you at the castle."

Sarah inwardly cursed for blushing so easily. There had always been a place for her there if anything he said from the last time was to be believed. But he had said nothing, made no gesture…her pride ached a little at the fact that she had not actually been wanted, that she nearly fell for the same line that she guessed any girl might have been fed in the same situation. But then why should she care? Jareth, no, she corrected herself, the Goblin King, was far more interested in maintaining his kingdom, and rightly so.

"Are you inviting me or waiting for me to ask?" she challenged.

"It is an open invitation, and if you decide to make the smart decision and be somewhere more guarded and less secluded, I will take you there before I take Toby."

"The servants?" she asked. For the first time since she returned to the house, she remembered them. Poor Aschenput might be at the mercy of the chimeras now, and all that the pudgy little goblin would be able to tell them about humans was that they liked Coke and the Democrats ("whatever that is," Aschenput recited) won the last election.

"The crystals will let me see where they are and I will send them to the castle to tend to you."

"Deal." She closed the book and tucked it under her arm. She took small steps towards him, her energy focused on keeping her back straight to avoid any "cowering," as he called it, although she never remembered cowering before him. Expecting to have to take his hand and zoom over the countryside, she closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she stood in the middle of a room even larger than her guest room back at the house, covered in cream and cranberry fabrics. The small fireplace provided heat to the whole room. She expected Toby to run in and compare rooms, but he was probably back in his own room at his own home with his own parents by now.

She cradled the key, back on the chain around her neck. Someone had wanted it, poisoning Garnet at her own party to make her stay in the house so they could come and take it from her. She hadn't recognized any of the guests except her old friends. That's what she should have asked, if they could come along to meet these Sidhes. She thought herself well-read in all creatures humans thought mythical, but she had never heard of them before, nor understood why they had to be visited in the first place except for the fact they were somehow connected to this key. Yes, she would make a humble request before the king tomorrow to have her friends come with them. As safe as he seemed this last day and in her dreams, she wanted as much distance between them as possible.

A/N: I do not own any Labyrinth characters that first appeared in the original movie. So...any predictions on what's going to happen? Please leave reviews. Reading and not leaving a review is like not returning extra change to the cashier at the grocery...they're actions that send you to hell. lol. Oh, and the first person to tell me who sings the song "Dreamlover" gets another cyber pat on the back. Cheers!


	8. Music of the Night

A/N: This chapter has some language. Please inform me if this means I have to change my rating. Cyber pat to **not written **for being the first to answer the question posted in the last chapter.

Toby awoke in his own bed the next morning. Rubbing his eyes, he ran from room to room calling Sarah's name.

"Toby? You're back early," Karen said, coming out of her room in her robe. Toby threw his arms around her.

"Sarah's still there!" he wailed, his young mind trying to make more sense of such a change. The last he knew, he was listening to everyone trying to decide what to be done about Garnet's death. He spilled out that news to his mother in muffled cries. Her face went white. His father soon came out to meet them.

"Toby! What's going on? Where's Sarah?"

Sarah couldn't watch anymore. She handed the crystal back to Aulis who watched her with pitying eyes.

"There, there, Sarah," Hoggle said, patting her hand. "He's better off at home than he is with 'the Folk.' They like the little ones. Might've spattered him in butter if he came along with us."

"It's just as well," she whispered. She, Aulis, Hoggle, and Lysander, who insisted on protecting the "Defeater of the Labyrinth," followed the first carriage through rolling mounds of emerald and jade, a bright sun giving the surroundings an even more glittering look. "As long as Sir Didymus keeps Ludo from eating all the food in the house."

"Lady Sarah," Lysander coughed, his chest inflating, "there is a great deal to be understood about the Sidhe upon meeting them for the first time, hence the importance of your appearance."

Sarah had chosen, at the nagging of Lysander, a dress to wear instead of her jeans. She picked a simple cream-colored dress with straight long sleeves.

"The Sidhe will appreciate such unadorned, country elegance," Lysander complimented her dress. "They are known to be stunning creatures, but they will be paled in light of such facile, unadulterated beauty."

She meant to only shake her head but her eyes decided to roll along with it. She hadn't thought it possible she could hear so many off-handed insults at her "simplicity" in a single grandiose sermon. Lysander went on, describing the Sidhe as fair-skinned, fair-haired creatures, of a smaller stature than the Sylph Lugubrious, a technical term he often used for higher-goblins.

"While the Sylph usually find our element to be air, these are a very earthy people. They take great pleasure in everyday conversation, games, smoking…I am sure they will feel nothing but reverence in your presence."

"And why not?" Hoggle broke the two-faced ass kissing making Sarah contemplate bailing out of the carriage. "She's got just the same looks and manner as any princess."

"Thank you." She blushed. "General Lysander, I'm sure my step-father can fill me in on more details if you would like to rest."

That forced an awkward, but pleasing silence in the small cab. She'd taken to calling Aulis her step-father since that's what he would have been soon anyway. It brought a confident smile to the shy general's face, almost one as big as when he had last talked to Garnet. Sarah saw them hide away at that party to a corner to share a few kisses, their arms wrapped around each other so tightly, like each one would vanish from sight. She'd watched with a slight jealousy, but that evaporated.

XXXXX

Jareth and Orion met them at a large castle off on its own, an actual thick bog providing a moat around it. Flags flapped overhead upon their entrance, somehow announcing their arrival. Sarah noticed on the horizon line several thatched homes built into the fertile fields. She could start to imagine what the Sidhe might look like. A bald man answered the door, a pipe clenched in the corner of a narrow mouth.

"Your Highness and entourage, an unexpected treat." The stout figure clapped his hands and fluttered off to announce them. Aulis started pushing Sarah closer to the front.

"Pardon me, your Highness. I didn't mean to push her into you. Stand up there, Sarah. It would be smart to milk your celebrity."

"Jareth!" a musical voice filled the room. Out of the stone ground, a petite woman grew until she reached just about five feet. Blonde curls swept over her shoulders. "I had no idea the Sylph made unexpected visits."

"Being courtly every second drains our energy, Pasia." Jareth grinned, kissing her small pink hand. "These are my generals: Aulis, Lysander, and Orion, one of my servants Hoggle, and Sarah. Her importance we will inform you of later."

"He said my name right!" Hoggle whispered to Sarah. She shushed him.

"A human." Pasia skipped over to her and took her hand. "Welcome! This must be such a strange journey for you." Still holding her hand, she led them up the grand stairway. "We'll have so many questions to ask about your world. Only the goblins visit up there now. Don't tell me, Jareth, after we discuss business you will not stay for socializing."

"You know we live for it," was the answer.

XXXXX

Sarah once again prepared to settle in another room for another night, laying out her clothes for the next day. At least before she came back here she'd been settled in one place. A gentle knocking broke her nightly ritual.

"Pasia and her courtiers have requested our presence," Jareth said at the door. "You will also want to change your clothes."

"I thought they had all been please by my 'country elegance,'" she said, remembering Lysander's ramblings.

"They like to change their clothes often and we are but guests." He entered without being asked, but waited near the door while she smoothed out a velvet gown of forest green and took it into her bathroom with her. "Your charm seems to be working with them. They have agreed to support us."

"Did you ask about the key?" she asked through the door.

"No. I thought I would leave that to you, although you have been known to not handle matters delicately."

She came out of the bathroom, picking up a handful of her dress off the floor. Taking a quick glance in the mirror, she waited for him.

"Are you waiting for me to compliment you?" he asked with a smirk.

"Having to wear everything I brought in one day, I'd think I'd deserve it," she joked. "Why haven't they asked for everyone else?"

"My guess is that they really just want to see you and I'm invited only to avoid impertinence." He shrugged.

Pasia met them at the end of the stairs. Dressed in a floral gown of the most feminine pink, she ran and once again took Sarah's hand. She led them out into the gardens where a crackling bonfire greeted them.

"You should not find the weather at all chilly, Sarah," she said, taking a moment to run her fingers through Sarah's long hair. "I have wondered what I would look like with straight hair, but one day I tried it and it turned out rather ghastly, not at all like yours."

"Your curly hair is very beautiful," Sarah said, eking out barely more than a whisper.

"Adorable human!" Pasia sighed, turning back to Jareth, walking just behind them. "Your subjects must not be able to keep their hands off her. I want you to meet my brother, one of my chief advisors. If only every night could be bonfires and company, for then I wouldn't need him. Faren!"

A red-haired man about the same height as Pasia came bounding through the trees, his clothes sporting a few patches of dirt.

"Your Highness." He bowed. "You didn't tell me we had guests, Pasia."

"You were not available to tell. You know Jareth, and this is Sarah, a human, a runner of the Labyrinth."

"Delighted." He bowed again. It was so rare for Sarah to see someone with such bright red hair without a freckle on his face. Wasn't there any species in this world at all that had ever known a bit of acne?

"Pasia, I had a question for you," Sarah began, taking out her chain. "My mother…"

"I'd been meaning to ask you about that, dear Sarah. It really is significant that had you not been left in the Aboveground you would have stayed a higher-goblin. But why did your mother and father take you there in the first place? I knew Erol, quite well, not as well as Garnet, but she scarcely left the country, and with the home she has, well, I don't blame her in the least."

"Sarah was born in a time of great war between the goblins and the Sidhe," she found Jareth speaking for her. She silently thanked him, finding her eyes beginning to water at the mentioning of Garnet. "Your people had targeted the commanders of the army and attacked their home."

"I had no idea!" All the color vanished from Pasia's perfect oval face. "To think how they must have feared for you so. Tell me, Sarah, did you live a good life with the humans?"

"A very good life," she answered. She had guessed Garnet gave her up for the same reasons human parents give up their children, maybe too young, just not ready, but once again, war disrupted Garnet's domestic life. "Pasia, I had a question."

"Oh! Yes, I forgot. What was it?"

"My mother and father left me with this when they gave me up," Sarah lied, cupping the key in both her hands so it could be viewed without being touched. "But unfortunately I can't very well read the writing. Do you know what it says?"

"Oh. There are few who can read the ancient languages anymore. Faren, what do you make of it? I see the word 'Sidhe' there."

"It says, 'Entrusted to Erol by the Sidhe.' That's funny. It appears you're to inherit some kind of treasure, Sarah." Faren circled her, seeming to drink in the sight of her. "May I say the green of your dress becomes you?"

"Faren, please," Pasia scoffed. "Erol has inherited only what his family has inherited before him. This key is charmed, Sarah, meaning the name changes based on time. Under Erol's name should be able to appear the owner of the key before him and so on, possibly until the very origin of your family. It is a gift to be able to trace one's heritage so plainly." Pasia then kissed Sarah's cheek and gave out a soft giggle.

"Would the lady permit me one?" Faren nudged his sister aside and stood on his tiptoes to just overreach Sarah's height. He closed his eyes, allowing Sarah the luxury of biting her lip in indecision.

"I'll tell you what, Faren. I will give you a kiss if you can solve a riddle I have." Their species may have been new to her, she thought, but all her readings of myth told her countless supernatural beings lived for riddles, telling them and solving them. She scanned the gardens while she thought of one of the more difficult ones she knew, noticing Jareth and Pasia had gone back inside. Higher and higher Faren's eyebrows rose, dancing the waiting dance Sarah recognized all too well from going places where small children had to wait in line for movies, rides, available restrooms…

"What forced strength cannot get through, I with a gentle touch can do.  
And many in the street would stand, were I not a friend at hand. What am I?" She let a smug grin escape. It took her a whole five minutes after she stumbled across that one in a riddle book to give up and look up the answer in the back pages.

"Gentle touch…many in the street," Faren muttered to himself, lost in his own concentration.

"The trick is to not over-think when it comes to riddles," she suggested, knowing it was the vaguest of recommendations she could offer.

"Alas, human Sarah, I don't know that one. I'd tip my hat to you if a few naughty sprites hadn't taken it from me." He beamed in spite of his defeat. "Do you like music? I shall send the musicians to accompany the bonfire for you." He turned to leave, and then spun back around to face her. "Just in case you ever change your mind, I might have a riddle or two for you." He whistled on his way back inside, ruddy, worked hands behind his back.

"Sarah," she heard behind her. "Is everything all right?"

Jareth stood right behind her, eliciting not a single jump from Sarah. She was too used to it by now.

"He's just a flirt. I thought maybe he'd be like a leprechaun or something and enjoy a riddle, but I really think I disappointed him by giving him a hard one."

"The Sidhe usually crave riddles. What was it?"

"What forced strength cannot get through, I with a gentle touch can do. And many in the street would stand, were I not a friend at hand. What am I?"

"A key, much like the one causing all this trouble." He raised an eyebrow at her.

"I guess you'd heard that one before," she said.

"It's not that hard. Perhaps your subject was just…uneducated." Listening to her laughter fill the fresh, lavish gardens of Pasia's castle gripped him and held him there.

"I have one for you: when you stop and look, you can always see me. If you try to touch you cannot feel me. I cannot move, but as you near me, I will move away from you. What am I?"

Sarah stopped walking, her eyebrows coming closer together in thought. Her head bobbed once before she finally spoke.

"The horizon. Is that right?" She waited for him to nod. "Next time you'll have to give me a harder one."

They walked along, and once again, Sarah gasped at knowing a song this evening. Two Sidhes, each with what resembled a cello, played out "Music of the Night." Karen, wanting to enforce a positive family unit, took Dad, Toby, and Sarah to see Danielle in _The Phantom of the Opera_. Hearing her mother's voice only in the chorus, Sarah decided that one song made up for any fight she and Karen ever had. From that time on, Karen was the woman who gave her the first, well, not the first, but a stirring musical experience…from the safety of a cushioned seat in a crowded theater.

"I didn't expect modern music to be so prevalent here," she said, her cheeks and stomach whispering to the rest of her who walked with her.

"We take away what we like. Think of it as humans taking our stories." He paused. "Music is very enjoyable to these people. You've found, I'm sure, the intense pleasure they get out of nearly everything."

He didn't look at her.

"I'm sorry," she found herself saying. "I'm sorry I defeated the Labyrinth."

"Are you?" he laughed, but without a trace of bitterness. "You would have preferred to see Toby now as a fuzzy little goblin? Here I thought you had been taken with him."

"You, none of you understand slang whatsoever," she sighed.

"I make it a point to avoid it."

"Sometimes when a person says 'I'm sorry,' they're really saying they didn't want the other person to feel bad. So I'm sorry if beating the Labyrinth made your pride suffer a little. I wouldn't want you to take a lot of crap from other kings or queens about it." She ran her last few sentences over and over in her head. This was ridiculous, she thought.

"You have nothing to worry about, Sarah. If anything, you've caused more to be interested in the contraption. I've had numerous offers from engineers and sorcerers to improve its difficulty. Somehow it sounds more impressive that only one person has beaten it than none."

"The idea of a Minotaur running through it…" She shuddered. "It was difficult enough." She saw him smile.

"I will take that as a compliment," Jareth said. "If Faren frightens you at all, you have nothing to worry about. He chases after females of all species."

She laughed, guessing as much. "I didn't take him too seriously."

"Yes, you are doing well here with them. A lesser human might have been eaten by them."

Sarah gasped at the words. She thought Hoggle had only been kidding with her. Her look of horror only incited a smirk from Jareth. No, she thought, the Goblin King.

"But they seem to like you."

"Pasia seems to like you." It made her flush at how easy-going he was being, a far cry from taking any measure necessary to make sure she failed his Labyrinth. She'd said before she didn't want to be near him if she could help it, but she welcomed it here in the gardens without so much as a streetlight blocking a vast array of stars above their heads.

"I like her also," he said.

"You're really going to have to learn some slang," she sighed. "Do you know what 'have a crush' means?"

He shook his head.

"I guess you don't really want to date her then."

"Date?"

"Ugh, date means for a guy and a girl to go spend time together because they have romantic interests in each other." She grimaced at such an academic definition for going to McDonalds with guys she could only describe as poor decisions.

"Is that the same as 'fuck?'"

"What? How do you know what 'fuck' means but you don't know what 'crush' means?" It was the last word she ever, ever expected the unruffled king of the goblins to say.

"I only know what I overhear." He shrugged, amused at her shock. "I overhear probably more profanity than anything else. I assumed…"

"No. They don't mean the same thing," Sarah said. "I guess you don't want to date Pasia then. She'll be disappointed."

"She is a very shrewd ruler in spite of her constant merriness." He said the last word with a hint of disdain. "But she is capable of making very difficult decisions, appointing the best officials. We will need her kingdom in the long run. But to be romantically interested in her as you call it would more likely destroy our kingdoms than unite them."

"Culture shock," she said, nodding her head. "I think she has a crush on you, though."

"That is because you have a vivid imagination," he said.

"I know I don't have very good dates much, but I know when another girl likes someone!" she argued. "You forget I'm just past the college level now. I see this kind of thing all the time."

"Watching others is probably why you don't have many dates," he argued back, laughing.

"You won't admit you like her? You're not romantically interested in her whatsoever?"

"No," was all he said. "We should go back into the castle."

"Why?" She saw his stance go rigid. She looked out into the hills and trees before her. The music had stopped, but how long ago she couldn't determine.

"Because we are being watched."

A/N: I do like my cliffhangers. Who is watching them? Why? Where do they go from here? Will you know all in the next installment? Probably not. But, I don't own any of the original Labyrinth characters and "Music of the Night" was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart (additional lyrics Richard Stilgoe) for _The Phantom of the Opera_, which I think premiered on Broadway in 1988. I got to say, I was Toby's age during this time and Sarah's lucky she was old enough to appreciate all the things coming out in the late 80s and 90s. Bring back good Disney and good Nickelodeon!


	9. Two To Make It Right

Sarah found herself instantly inside the castle, Pasia and Faren running out with what looked like quivers strapped onto their backs, bows in hand. She folded her arms at having no magical ability. How helpless it made her feel. How did everyone think she defeated the Labyrinth then? Pixie dust?

"Lady Sarah?" Orion bustled down the stairs in a nightshirt and slippers. If this is what all higher-goblin men wore to bed, she would have to scoff at anyone who called them attractive. "I heard sounds. Where is his Highness?"

"They think someone was outside," she said with a casual gesture to the door leading out into the gardens. "I'm sure they'll be back soon."

"Yes," he said, nodding. "Most likely they would call on the rest of us if they needed assistance." He sat on a thick, exquisite chair near the wall, his hand flying to his forehead. Deep inhales filled the room. Sarah fought the laughter swimming up her vocal chords when she replayed all the information that had been forced on her in the last few days. She took a seat across from him in a similar chair, so warm and conforming to her body.

"General, can chimeras shape shift?"

"What?" He sprang up at the word. "Oh. Yes, yes, I'm afraid they can. You know what their true form is of course, the lion, the goat, and the serpent all rolled into one barbaric mess, but most, if not all, I think, can take on other forms if they need it."

"That's why this spy is so important."

"Yes," he said with a frown. "It is my belief that the spy is not a traitor per se, but a chimera posing as a goblin."

"Have you told anyone your suspicions?" she asked.

"No. No, most I fear would think it too far-fetched."

"You don't seem to be known for a wild imagination," she commented. She had classified him simply as "the belligerent one" in her notebook before she even learned his name.

"No, but I am pushing for a war many of the generals do not want to have," he said. "I'd be so afraid they'd think I would say anything to make the king declare war."

"He doesn't seem like a pacifist type to me."

"Oh, he's not by any stretch. But he is the sort of leader who wants to be sure he can win before he commits to anything, which is usually a very shrewd, scrupulous thing to do. And with a spy still running around, I'm sure he's hesitant to share his strategies with any of us."

"Naturally," she commented, trying to memorize his eye movements, his tone. There was a reason he had been asked to come along. "General, did you know my parents well?"

"Garnet? No. No, she kept to herself. We all knew she had some secrets in her past, not that we'd ever guess you were one of them, my dear." He gave her the first welcoming expression since she'd met him. "Erol was a more social creature."

"He was?"

"Oh yes. Erol had friends in all parts of this world. He had quite a long family line, one of the oldest in all goblin history, and he was very proud of that. History was his passion, especially the stories of old. He collected them like nothing else. That's probably what attracted him to Garnet so. She could create such stories just off the top of her head. They would talk and talk about things no one else knew anything about for hours. A bit annoying sometimes, to be honest."

She laughed, fighting the urge to wish to see what her father looked like.

"The day he found out she was with child—mind you now, Sarah, we assumed Garnet had lost the baby. It's an unfortunate fact of life here. I'm sure our infant mortality rate is much higher than yours. And afterwards Garnet was much quieter and Erol, well, he'd lost some of his spirit. So we thought they'd lost you. But they planned on so many children, a shame they never really knew the one they had."

"Erol liked the ancient languages. I take it he was your friend," she said, choosing her words carefully, "did you do any of that together?"

"Translating? I speak not a word of it. That was his. We joined together for sports, for meals on occasion. We were friends, but the ancient languages were Erol's and his alone. I imagine he got Garnet into it, dear old girl."

"Keeping Garnet's little one up all night, Orion?" Lysander entered through the next room. "I've been looking for someone to switch rooms with. That infernal dwarf snores like no other."

"I heard the rest are investigating outside," Orion said with a huff.

"Outside? We should join them." A silvery sword made Sarah squint when it caught the candlelight.

"I'm sure they'll be back soon. They're just sweeping the grounds," she said. "Lysander, did you know my parents very well?"

"No, cannot say that I did. A might too bookish they were. I tell you, though, if he were here he'd be able to make sense of that key for you. He had interests in that sort of thing. Ah! The search party returns!"

Sarah followed the pattern of the two generals standing as the door opened.

"Nothing," Faren said with slumped shoulders.

"Anyone would think you'd welcome a rampage on our home," Pasia teased. "Everything's fine now, Sarah, if you would like to go back outside. Jareth does sometimes see what he wants to see." She gave his arm a powerless punch. Sarah noticed the restraint in the king's eyes at the unwanted contact.

"Thank you, Pasia, but it's time for me to go on to bed." An awkward curtsy preceded her long walk to her guestroom.

XXXXX

Within the confines of her room, Sarah tried to write verbatim every word Orion told her. Lysander proved a little more laconic, but she would make notes of his sparse words next. Flipping through to the last page of her notebook, she made small dashes under the names of her parents in the family tree she designed earlier. Each dash held a characteristic about her parents. Once they were done, she would find out about her grandparents. Maybe she had cousins. She would go see all of them.

She let her pen drop onto the paper. It always seemed something kept her here longer than she meant to be. Going back to her notes, she finished writing about Orion and began on Lysander. She'd take to observing them with even more scrutiny tomorrow depending on what happened. She should have asked if they were going back or continuing to somewhere else or if they were staying here longer than one night. She'd need more clothes if they were going to be here much longer.

She closed her notebook and placed it under the mattress of the bed before turning off her light. Finding another hiding place for it in the morning would be all too easy with such a large room and servants only entering when she called for them. A star-filled sky just on the other side of the window caught her eye. Never able to find even the Big Dipper, she wondered if anyone bothered to connect the stars in this world and come up with names for them. There certainly were enough to do so. Humming a few bars from "Music of the Night" to herself, she placed her head into her folded arms and looked outward.

"She is never alone," she heard out in the distance. Peering out into the castle grounds, she spotted a figure below her window, but she was too high up to make out any features.

"Giving the human the key was too obvious," another voice hissed in the darkness. "We should have realized. You should have realized."

"I didn't know until today the key was the key we needed."

"You will get her alone, do you understand? It may have to wait since she is under the protection of the goblins and the Sidhe now, but eventually, you must get her alone."

"With no one suspecting?"

"Use your imagination. Get back inside before you are missed."

Sarah ducked down beneath her ledge. Her fingers instinctively enveloped the key around her neck. Still on the floor, she pulled her notebook out from the mattress and copied the conversation down word for word. She'd only seen one figure, but heard two voices. Chimeras could shape shift, Orion told her. If at least one of those was a chimera, it could be as small as a worm inching its way through the tall blades of grass all too plentiful in the fields.

Pulling a robe over the silk gown Pasia gave her to sleep in, she unlocked her door and peered through the crack. Moving on the balls of her bare feet, she managed to serpentine the wide corridor until she reached the door she needed. Without knocking she burst through it.

Jareth jerked his head in surprise. Still unsettled, sitting on his window ledge, he remained motionless after his initial reaction, waiting for her to speak.

"You have to hide this," she said, holding her notebook to him.

"What is it that you burst in here without so much as a knock?" He took it but refrained from opening it.

"Notes. There were voices outside my window." His eyes finally showed concern. "They were talking about the key. In that notebook I have everything I've heard from everyone about it."

His long fingers flipped to the page where she last wrote and read the words. "What are your suspicions?"

"Probably the same as yours since you brought Orion and Lysander here. Why did you suspect them in the first place?"

"They have spoken of rebellion before," he confided. "Dissatisfaction. Your mother used to speak freely also, but always constructively. It was different."

"I understand," she said. "Do you have something in mind about what we're going to do here, or are you just going to send me back?"

"I can't send you back," he said quickly. "The key will soon have your name on it. My guess is that you will be the only one able to use it. That makes you highly valuable to the chimeras. There is no doubt now they want the key to release the Minotaur."

"Why?"

"I can't answer that yet, but you cannot go back. They would be able to follow you and take you."

"You're wrong," she said.

"Wrong?"

"The key still had Erol's name on it when they came for Garnet. It wouldn't have done any good for them to get it then if she couldn't have used it."

"Unless they didn't know that at the time. You have to remember, Sarah, that their spy learns information. They do not know all the steps right away." He looked back out the window. Gathering his thoughts, he managed to look back at her. "We will stay here and fill Pasia in on our situation. She will most likely rally her troops and we will have to wage war against the chimeras with what we have."

"That will be hard considering you don't know which of your generals to trust," she said.

"I can trust the ones back at the kingdom," he snapped. "I will charge the three here with your care. There will be safety in numbers. That way the spy will have to face not only you and Higgle…"

"He was so happy that you got his name right before."

"…Hoggle, but also two more generals."

"Orion had an interesting theory." She didn't know if he was sincere or if it was meant to throw everyone off course, but she told him what Orion said to her, the childlike part of her brain ashamed at betraying another's secret. But Jareth listened without comment, without expression. When she finished, his head reeled back just enough to let it rest against the wall.

"Damn it, you won't be able to leave my sight," he muttered to himself.

"Excuse me?"

"Can you see any alternative? Their plan is to find you when you are alone. One chimera against two goblins and a human might be a fair fight at best. I've decided. Sarah, I will teach you magic. You're clever enough and persistent enough to learn it, so I will show you what I can for you to defend yourself. But it would be best that during your training you are in the company of others," he said.

"You'll teach me magic?" Her heart leapt at such an opportunity.

"As much as you can handle. Speaking of which, I hope you haven't determined that because you were once briefly a goblin you were able to defeat the Labyrinth. Any trace of that in you has been wiped out with time and exposure to the human world. You were able to do it on your own."

"Thank you for seeing my self-esteem hasn't suffered much," she said with a great deal of sarcasm. So she could learn magic.

"It was just to give you some faith that you will be able to master a few spells. Not every human can. I am able to compare you to other humans, you know."

"When do we start?"

Jareth could not help but grin. It was the same tone she would have used seven years ago, that impatient whine with a hint of authority behind it. Oh but be fair, he reminded himself. You want to start soon too.

"In the morning if you can contain yourself for that long."

"Yes!" She stopped herself from jumping. "If you have a book I can look up ones I think might help and…"

"What you really should do tonight is rest. That should require quite a bit of magic if you stay this agitated."

"Excitement isn't agitation," she argued.

"Go on back to your room, Sarah," he ordered. "I will send Hoggle in to keep you company. You can always call for me if you feel you are in danger." Do it, he told himself. You won't get another opportunity. "Unless you want to stay in here." Damn, he said it too rushed, too annoyed in tone. She would laugh.

"My own room will do, but thank you," she said. He could tell she appreciated the offer and maybe he was just seeing what he wanted to see, as Pasia accused him of doing, but he thought he saw her blush on her way out the door. Waiting for her to leave, he took out a crystal and watched her climb into bed. He made her notebook disappear as she requested as he saw her glance out her window one more time. She would never forgive him if she knew, but he brushed his hand over the crystal, keeping any nightmares from finding their way into her ever-thinking, ever-imagining mind.

A/N: I don't own any of the original Labyrinth characters or the movie. That is the magic of Jim Henson and George Lucas. I do look forward to magic lessons, though, and maybe a few battles of epic proporition that defy imagination and inspire countless direct-to-dvd sequels, but we'll see what happens.


	10. Hungry Eyes

"You're going to have to do that slower," Sarah said, still holding her crystal with both hands, holding her breath at the knowledge that the slightest movement of her fingers could make it disappear again. Before today she assumed the crystals only provided a view into what couldn't be seen at the time with one's own eyes. But according to Jareth, crystals could provide handheld weapons far deadlier than any she knew from her own world.

Sighing in frustration, his fingers let the perfect little ball roll, and right before it could shatter to the ground, he dipped his hand to catch it in his palm. She let one hand drop and repeated the process. Making a crystal appear turned out to be easy. Preparing it to be tossed at an opponent, however…

"You've stopped concentrating on it."

Sarah tried one more time, taking a deep inhale to wipe away her disgruntlement. At last she caught it in her palm, already feeling it heat up and taking on an orange glow.

"Throw it before it burns you."

Hurling it across the gardens, the crystal hit a speckled rock, the little bits of glass dashed against the hard surface turned instantly into flames. A small fire crept up into the sky only to be quelled by Hoggle and his watering can.

"Felt the flames on that one!" he shouted to her.

"Oh, my gosh! That is so cool!" She jumped, concentrating on manifesting another one. This time the crystal appeared resting right on the top of her hand. "Are they intuitive? It's like it knows what I want to do with it."

"If you concentrate hard enough they can be," Jareth said. "This time try to make it faster. You still take too long preparing it."

Sarah let the crystal roll down her fingers and back into her palm, pummeling it back at the rock with full force. A larger fire shot up into the air but soon dwindled down into nothing more than the size of a candle flame, which Hoggle delighted in stamping out with his boot. All the way on the other side of the garden, Sarah beamed at not only her growing skill, but her aim. The girls in her dorm had called her the weak link during intramural softball.

"Is this about the rate everyone learns how to use them?" she asked.

"Only a little quicker. You have some, though, that couldn't hit the rock and would take out all of Pasia's beautiful trees," he laughed. Fond memories of watching his cousins unable to…there was a human phrase for it that he liked…hit the broad side of a barn with a crystal.

"How is she coming?" Pasia called to them, exiting her castle after a second bath and in a different gown. She brought out a plate of what looked to Sarah like pieces of popcorn chicken.

"Very well," Jareth answered, allowing himself a few pieces. Waiting for everyone around her to partake, Sarah finally popped one into her mouth.

"How do you like the chicken, Sarah?" Pasia asked her.

"Very good, thank you," she said after swallowing. "I suppose it's time for me to change also?"

"With afternoon coming it would be decidedly more comfortable," Pasia said. Suppressing the sigh she felt coming on, Sarah hustled back into the castle, already repeating her fashion statements thanks to the local customs. She didn't understand how that could be any more impressive or respectful than just wearing one outfit a day, and it was out of the question to toss back on her jeans and t-shirts.

Pasia watched her go.

"A fine student?"

"Exceptional. She'll be above the most basic spells soon enough." Seeing her place the now-empty tray of food down on a table, she paused before entering the gardens. He met up with her and let her walk right beside him through the gardens. He much preferred when Pasia was straight across from him at a distance. As short as she was, he had to crane his neck just to be able to give her the decency to look her in the eye when he spoke to her. More than two feet separated them when it came to height.

"Is Sarah a standard human as far as her physicality goes?"

"I would say so. She's the average height for a female human, probably a little under the average in weight."

"I hope Faren did not frighten her last night. It's just his way," she apologized, staring down at the ground. "He does not mean to come on so strong."

"I'm sure she's forgotten about it," he lied. He noticed the weary look she gave the elfish man whenever they were in the same room. He had inferred from their conversation she was not overly used to male attention. "She seems to enjoy your company."

"Yes, she is a sweet, sweet girl," Pasia said. "Is she your confidante?"

"A ruler has no confidante," he said quickly.

"That is true, but I was wondering specifically," she said and then paused, "if she had spoken to you of me."

"Afraid we gossip about you?" he bantered. He stopped at the pained way she closed her eyes. "Is something troubling you?"

"Jareth," she said. "I, I like you."

"I like you too." He gave her as sincere a smile as he could. He did like her. He much preferred her to other dignitary with which he was forced to socialize.

"No. No." She shook her head. "We will support the goblins in the efforts against the chimeras."

"Thank you."

"So your answer will not affect that," she said, climbing atop one of the many benches placed all around her gardens. Face to face with him, she took a deep breath. "I have…romantic interest in you."

For an absurd moment, all Jareth's mind could think, "So she does have a crush on me," but he soon banished the Aboveground slang. Sarah had been right. Damn her, and damn him for not believing her until this awkward moment surfaced. Standing there stunned facing the petite little queen, he gathered his thoughts.

"Pasia, I enjoy our time together…"

"Don't do that, please," she whispered, staring at the ground once again.

"I don't know what to say," he said. "It's never hurt to spurn another's advances before." He traced her temple with a gentle hand. "But that was because none of them were ever a friend before."

Pasia bit her lip. Her pink face shone in humiliation. Suddenly she looked up with a pert smile.

"Well, it simply could not have been anyway. You would have crushed me as it is," she forced a laugh. "I think I will retire until dinner. You know you always have free reign in my castle."

"Pasia," he started, but she walked right through him and faded away.

XXXXX

He walked back into the sitting room of the castle where his generals all sat with Sarah, reading what few books the Sidhe owned. Sarah sat on the floor, scribbling down her thoughts into her notebook he taught her to conjure up for herself earlier that day. Hoggle sat next to her, copying the letters she used onto his own small notebook. He really should have taught that dwarf how to read.

"Your Highness!" Aulis sprang to his feet. Lysander and Orion followed suit. Sarah stayed planted on the floor. It was in those blatant moments of disrespect he felt like being cruel to her, but he never could seem to manage it. He motioned for them to sit and took a chair for himself. Faren, once again stained by chasing after the field sprites, plopped down onto the chair next to him.

"Woodland fairies," he said, coughing out what looked like a small wing. "You'd never think they tasted so salty."

Jareth noticed Sarah look up with a disgusted look on her face.

"And yet you aren't thirsty?" He continued the chitchat.

"Oh, we have that lovely little well in the back," Faren said, pointing back to the gardens. "I just thought I'd mention it in case, oh, but I forgot goblins aren't as used to the country cooking as we."

"Cooking would imply some civilized manner of digesting your prey," Orion mumbled.

"What's that now?" Faren sat up. "You're saying I, a top-ranked official of this kingdom, and my sister, the queen of it, are uncivilized because we enjoy the fairy folk? You're a species to talk, General Orion, stealin' babies and instead of feedin' your countless poor with them, you just make 'em into more goblins! I never heard of such a ridiculous system."

"To each his own," Sarah began, but Hoggle quickly covered her mouth with his hand.

"I ought to wring your neck for such a comment." Orion stood, his nostrils flaring at the pointy-eared man with a small blood stain on his chin.

"What's the difference wringing a chicken's neck and wringing anything else's? We served you chicken, pork—all the 'acceptable' things to eat and this is the gratitude we get from guests?"

"Faren, silence," Pasia ordered, finally entering. "Our guests have been gracious." She stepped back outside without saying another word.

"Funny," Lysander said. "She usually takes a whole five minutes greeting us and asking what we need and the like. Lady Sarah, I do hope you haven't offended her. Perhaps I should escort you to her to apologize?"

"The last thing I need, General, is to hear how inappropriate my dress is for apologizing to a queen," Sarah snapped, her eyes not leaving her writings. She shut her notebook and took it up the stairs with her. Hoggle trotted along after her calling, "Sarah. You know me legs aren't as long as yours. Humans."

"Aulis," Jareth said, "Make sure no further childish behavior continues down here." He disappeared rather than walk up the stairs.

Sarah sat on her bed, just finishing the organizing of her thoughts when he entered.

"I guess that's for not knocking when I came into your room," she said.

"For all the half-day's worth of magic you know, you should still not isolate yourself." He took a seat in the rocking chair in the room, enchanted to fit the size of whoever rested upon it. "I saw you were writing. Care to enlighten me?"

"Not really. I'm too biased, I think. Aulis is above suspicion in my mind, so I begin to hate Lysander and Orion more. That's why I left."

"We will be called back down soon anyway." He paused, taking note of her forest green dress she wore for part of yesterday. "I will make sure she will know when to escort her army back to the goblin kingdom before we embark against the chimeras. I trust by then we will have sorted out this spy business. Sarah, you were right about something."

"About what?"

"Pasia wanted me alone to tell me something."

A smirk flashed across Sarah's face.

"I told you."

"Yes, saying that always helps," he snapped with sarcasm. "I need you to talk to her and see how hurt she is. She said she would not go back on her word, but I didn't mean to hurt her."

"I can't do that."

"Oh, you can't?" he said with a raised eyebrow. "Why ever not?"

"It already happened. She had a right to tell you and you had a right to reject her. To quote you, 'what's said is said.'"

"You ungrateful little human!" He stood, looming over her. "I bother to show you what no other human in the world knows and this is how you repay me? She's taken with you, has no intention whatsoever of making you tonight's main course, and would probably prefer another female to talk to, and you refuse?"

"I'm not your subject. You can't make me do anything." She stayed seated, making sure her voice stayed calm. Nothing worsened a situation like bringing a third party in to mitigate, especially against royal factions.

"I think you'd find I can if I wanted," he said, a vague chill in his voice. "For all you know you still have barely scratched the surface of magic and what it can do. I can make you do things, Sarah. It is a small favor I ask."

"And since you ask it, I have the freedom to turn it down. It would only make things worse," she said.

For a moment, she let herself lock eyes with him. His eyes differed from even each other, and it took her all her strength to look away. Within seconds, he was gone from the room. Fully aware how right he'd been in the fact that she shouldn't be alone, she went back downstairs, expecting angry silence to hover around all of them.

XXXXX

Their hostess remained absent from dinner, and Sarah stayed silent while a wide variety of breads and vegetables were passed around the table, no meat in sight. The generals seemed more put off by the apparent lack of entrees, but it was actually Hoggle that felt the need to mention it.

"Afraid we'd ask if we were eating someone we knew, eh?" he asked Faren.

"My sister ordered the meal this evening, not me."

"I must apologize for what I said before, Sir Faren," Orion said, standing with a formal air. "Please forgive me."

"Of course, no matter. Sit down and we'll have a smoke afterwards," Faren stuttered out, his cerulean eyes growing larger at the unexpected comment.

"Be glad to. I have some questions about your people I'd like to know, such as your history in bronze work."

Sarah made a mental note.

"After dinner, general. After dinner."

Pasia burst through the kitchen with a maid bustling behind her, carrying a tray of something that looked like red wine.

"You must have the sangmagis," she said, taking her seat at the head of the table. "You have nothing to worry about, Sarah. It is a simple wine, not blood."

Sarah gave a nervous grin, disappointed her distaste had shown so obviously. The others all seemed used to it, even Hoggle gulping it down and pouring a little bit over his vegetables. Sarah took a small sip. It had a syrupy taste to it, with a sour aftertaste. She managed to drink down some of her water from her other glass before trying the wine again. Her tongue rolled inside her mouth, trying to hide from what it was about to be exposed to. She should have guessed the Sidhe enjoyed such sweet drinks. She sipped again, controlling the compulsion for her lips to pucker together from it.

"How do you like it?" Pasia asked.

"Very unique, nothing like what I've ever had before," she said with a smile. Pasia watched her drink it before finishing her own glass. "There is no need to finish if it is too strong for you. I presume it is much like the kind of wine you have where one must acquire a taste for it?"

"Probably," she coughed out. She saw the generals excuse themselves, and followed suit.

Blindly following them through the castle, she found Aulis had gone back into the kitchen.

"Is everything all right, my lady?" she heard him ask.

"Perfectly fine, thank you," Pasia answered him.

Sarah kept her eyes on the others, growing more and more ahead of her. She still squinted from that abysmal drink despite how little she had. Lysander and Orion stopped in a dark corner in the main hall of the castle, the moonlight just barely touching them. They stood close together. Huddling back behind the stairs, she kept still.

"You don't want to make an enemy of me, Orion."

"Always imagining the silliest things," Orion dismissed. "You can't…"

"All that talk about 'bronze work.' Don't think I don't know what you had in mind. I have half a mind to tell the king."

"You've always had half a mind," Orion laughed. "And while you're here, don't think this kind of talk absolves you of any suspicion in my mind. A keen mind suspects everyone."

"Still," Lysander said, stepping back from him. "We'll have another little chat soon. Very soon. Have a good smoke with Faren."

Orion dashed back through the dining room into the sitting room, not seeing Sarah crouched in the shadows. She summoned her notebook and let the discussion pour out onto the pages. It didn't help that each suspected the other, but there might be some clue. Yes, what Orion said was suspicious. But maybe he was just curious. Lysander definitely thought it was more than curiosity. But how did Lysander know about the key in the first place? She didn't think he'd been around when she'd mentioned it.

Just as she was thinking, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

"What are you doing here alone?" Pasia asked. "You must come in the sitting room with us."

Sarah turned back to see where Lysander was, but he was gone.

In the sitting room, everyone but Orion and Faren partook in after-dinner drinks, the cellists from last night providing some mild entertainment. She peered through the windows and saw Orion and Faren back in the distance, smoke rings lingering over their heads.

"How sad that after tonight we must all go to war," Pasia sighed, sitting next to Sarah. "My armies will be assembled first thing in the morning and we shall escort you back to the goblin kingdom where we can charge from there. We are a little people, Sarah, but with our arrows in one hand and our clubs in the other, we can make short work of our enemies."

"Perhaps Sarah would like to know some of your history," Jareth spoke up, although with a quiet voice. Sarah scoffed at the meagerness of his peace offering.

"Oh, I'm sure she's not interested in academia tonight," Pasia laughed. "But another night I would certainly like to have you here for questions and answers. I'd be as enlightened to know about your world as you would be to know mine."

Sarah nodded in thanks, but felt her temples pounding. She kept looking over at Jareth, unable to stop looking him all over. Her chest began to heave at how near…and yet how far he was from her. He should be the one next to her, the one touching her, the one inside her.

She shook her head, placing her hand over her heart, feeling each rapid spasm. When he stopped looking at the window and finally made eye contact with her, finally, it felt like too much.

"How did you like dinner?" she heard Pasia, but it seemed off in the distance.

"All of it was very good, thank you," she whispered, afraid she'd let out a moan. Parts of her ached with a longing she had not felt for anyone for a long time. Come save me, Jareth, she thought. Take me outside, take me upstairs. The sensible part of her even begged just for him to send her to her room to be alone and let the strange sensation pass.

"We grow our own vegetables and the wheat fields of the Sidhe are legendary." Why wouldn't she just shut up, Sarah thought. Pasia's voice felt like a heavy weight on top of her head.

"And the sangmagis? Did you like the sangmagis?"

"A little too strong for my taste," Sarah said, feeling sweat under her hair on the back of her neck, just from looking at him. Imagining how he could make her feel if he touched her, those hands on her—she held up her head with her hand to control the, the, she couldn't even put it into words. She'd been aroused before, turned on before, but never like this. Seeing Jareth head towards the stairs sent her heart crashing to the ground.

"It serves a purpose," Pasia said, seeing Sarah's anguish. "It lowers our inhibitions, much like your wine does. But instead of lowering all of them, it only breaks down the barriers of the one thing we keep from ourselves the most. Sometimes it's anger, sometimes it's tears, sometimes it's lust. We've all grown up with it, so it was a small experiment to see how it would be for someone so new to it."

"What are you doing?" Sarah whispered, gasping for breath.

"Just bringing out what it is you want. I'm just at a loss to know whether it's taken effect yet."

Sarah could listen no longer. She picked herself up and sprinted to the stairs.

Pasia watched her go, a saddened look on her face. So her suspicions were true. She brought her knees up to her chest and held them. In spite of it all, she liked the human, really did. But it still hurt. Go on and have what I cannot, Sarah, she thought. Refusing to pity herself over her heartbreak any longer, she joined her brother outside. There will be others, she thought.

XXXXX

Jareth stepped up on the first stair, not sure why he couldn't stay down there. He wanted to be alone. This visit was so prolonged even though it had hardly spanned a full two days. He only wanted to be able to breathe, away from the politics and the war. He only wanted…

He felt himself being pulled back, arms over his shoulders, dragging him back. Turning, fully prepared to fight, he had no time to react to Sarah throwing her arms around his neck and slamming her lips onto his.

He closed his eyes, joining her, cupping her face to hold her to him. He had feared what would happen if she ever gave him the chance. Their kiss deepened at the bottom of the stairs. His hands slid back to her head, stroking her long hair he'd wanted to be smothered in for so long, down to her waist. He tore himself away from her lips only to let his lips feel her jaw, her chin, her neck, all the way to the soft, smooth dip where her neck met her shoulder.

Listening to her shallow breaths excited him more. He leaned into her, letting her feel what she was doing to him. A primitive purr cascaded out of her mouth while he went back to her lips, savoring it this time, tasting it all. Sarah's hand glided up through his hair.

"So beautiful, Sarah," he moaned, breaking away only for a breath before crashing into her again.

"Upstairs," she gasped, burrowing herself into him. He almost lost control then and there. Just about to send them both to his room, he heard a third voice.

"I wish the goblins would come and take me away."

Damn! He cursed at the sensation of fading away from her, leaving her just when he knew she wanted him. There would be no kindness he could show whoever wished those words, perhaps no bargaining at all. This child would stay, thrown to whatever couple was next on the list for adoption. He had no time for it now, not while his very essence was throbbing the way it was.

He stood in a boy's bedroom with thunder booming from outside the window. He peered down at the little form in front of him.

It was Toby.

A/N: I do not own the Labyrinth characters. I do not own any of the crazy Muppets. I'm just happy I have my husband right now. If you'll excuse me...


	11. This Used to Be My Playground

A/N: This chapter contains some strong language.

The bottom of the stairs seemed so vast, so empty. Sarah sighed, her heart finally reaching a calm pace. She'd heard the voice too, at the worst of times. The intensity vanished, but she was left with a feeling of the deepest dissatisfaction. What would she do when he came back?

"Sarah!" someone screamed from the sitting room. The sound of glass shattering broke her private world.

XXXXX

"Toby," Jareth began, struggling to maintain his composure, wanting nothing more than to take out this little boy that took him away from Sarah at the worst possible time. "Why did you call me?"

"I missed Sarah. I want to know if she's okay."

"She's fine," he growled. She had been fine, and she would have been even better once he was finished with her. But the boy's eyes twitched at his raised voice, as all frightened humans' did when they found him in their room. He sighed, still able to feel Sarah's fingers running through his hair, such an addictive sensation, but Toby crossed his arms and waited for him to say more. "What troubles you so, Toby?"

"Why did you send me back if she's fine?"

"Things have grown complicated in the Underground. It's no longer a place for you."

Just as he finished saying it, Jareth felt a pull, so similar to how he felt when someone called him to come and take a child off their hands. But it was backwards, a call to come back. Sarah. Sarah calling him? He could sense a panic, terror, in her.

"Toby, I have to leave. I will not take you with me."

Letting the pull take him to where he needed to be, he closed his eyes. The best way was to just let it happen.

Even a small child could detect worry in an adult's voice. Shaking at the thought of Sarah in trouble, Toby ran and gripped the goblin king, and saw his room fade away before his eyes.

XXXXX

"Sarah!" Pasia yelled, stepping in between her and a growling chimera, its foam dripping down to the floor in a wiry string. Taking aim, Pasia shot one of the beasts.

A pack of chimeras circled them all, each one as long as a lion. Fighting her ever-increasing inhales bordering on hyperventilating, Sarah concentrated on summoning a crystal. Like before, it heated in her palm, its orange glow radiating stronger and stronger. She hurled it at the chimera nearest to her, hearing the whimpering sounds of an animal. The creature rolled around on the floor. Aulis, fighting off the one that had cornered him, spotted the injured chimera writhing and drove his sword into it.

Suddenly, Toby dropped down from midair, plopping down on his tailbone. A familiar snow owl screeched, clawing at the face of one of the chimera, droplets of blood landing on the floor.

"Toby!" Sarah ran into the center of the room and scooped him up in her arms. She ran with him through the main hall into the kitchen. A chimera followed her with its eyes and gave chase, its stride gigantic. It cornered her in the kitchen in seconds, stalking back and forth, waiting for her to move first so it could take her throat in its fanged mouth.

A knife was what she needed. Balancing Toby, she freed one hand and slowly moved it inches away from him. She pictured the shininess of a straight knife, jagged edges at the ends. A crystal formed in her palm, but instead of heating, seemed to stretch in her hand.

She threw the knife just in time to wound the chimera in the leg. Throwing open the pantry door, she pushed Toby into it and closed the door, pulling open every drawer until she found a long, dagger-like knife among the rest of the silverware. Not stopping to think if it ever carved human flesh, she ran back out the door where her wounded chimera tried to limp away.

Diving onto it, she drove the knife into its back. A loud roar echoed throughout the main hall.

"Lady Sarah! Help me!"

Jerking her head, she saw Lysander underneath one of the chimera, his teeth gritted trying to push it off of him. Just as she was about to run to him, her chimera bucked and threw her off of it, driving her underneath it.

She took the knife with her, tearing away at the flesh of the back of the monster. She thrust the knife into its underside, all four legs surrounding her. Lying on her back under it, she twisted the knife out and stabbed it again. Blood poured out of all its mouths, a shrill yelp from its goat head the worst of all to Sarah. It soon lay still, her knife all that propped it off.

Wriggling free, she crawled to Lysander. The snake part of the chimera coiled around his leg and began to drag him.

Finally finding an opportunity to take back his true form, Jareth unsheathed his sword at a second chimera coming at him. The screams of one of his generals caught his attention, but he couldn't dare turn. Faren knocked up against him, his quiver almost emptied.

"Arrows!" he cried.

Pasia tossed a few arrows from her quiver to her brother. He quickly stored all but one and fired the sharp arrow at his opponent. His sister did the same to hers.

Sarah ran after Lysander, but the chimera jumped over the broken glass of the window and landed outside. Unable to free himself, Lysander hit his head on the ledge of the window and disappeared through the gardens and out of Sarah's line of sight. She stood frozen, imagining the horrible things they could do to him, that they would torture out of him just to learn the whereabouts…

Her hand flew to her key; by some miracle it had stayed on its chain, only now she saw on the key a word she made sure she could read in the ancient language: Sarah.

What sounded almost like a bullet firing woke her. She turned to see Jareth just pull his hand away. She followed his gaze up to the massive chandelier hanging above the main hall, constructed of what Sarah hoped were not human bones. He had shot a crystal at the rope holding it. The rope unraveled and the massive chandelier crashed down on top of the last chimera in the castle.

"Toby," she said to herself and ran back into the kitchen. Opening the pantry door, she gathered Toby into her arms and jostled him up and down, just as she had when he was a baby. "Are you all right?"

"I knew you were in trouble," he whispered.

She cradled his head, carrying him back to the main hall. Orion nodded, acknowledging the chimera she finished off while wiping some blood from a cut on his chin. Everyone seemed to just be standing, waiting for someone to speak. Pasia and Faren lifted the chandelier off the chimera corpse and set it in a corner, their heaving breaths the only sound throughout the hall.

"Lysander is gone," Sarah said, flinching at her own voice.

"Just as well," Orion said.

Setting Toby down, she marched up to him.

"What were you talking about before? I heard it."

"What?" Orion's face grew red. The rest surrounded him, their faces eager to hear more. "He wanted to talk where it was secluded."

"Answer."

"He wanted to tell me he openly suspected me. He became quite offended when I said I suspected him in turn and said I didn't want him for an enemy. Absurd, empty threats from an idiot, Lady Sarah, I can assure you."

"You mentioned bronze at the table," she said, narrowing in on him, hoping she could make some attempt to intimidate an older, more magical, more experienced general.

"Because bronze was one of the words Intelligence found!"

"You wanted to discuss Intelligence at the table?" Faren asked.

"In an indirect, covert way, yes."

"Lysander called you out on it and now he's gone," Sarah said.

"I am not a traitor. I'm not, your Highness!" He turned his attention to Jareth, staring intently at him. "Tell him! If you overheard, you know what all was said."

"I recorded what I heard," she said with a purposeful vague tone.

"We all heard you mention bronze," Aulis said, taking Orion by the shoulders. "If you had anything to do with Garnet's death."

"I respected Garnet! She was a worthy general, she was. I would never have done such a thing!" Orion blasted out. "Did it occur to anyone maybe Lysander wanted to be overheard?"

"He just said what we were all thinking!" Aulis cried out. "Why did you mention bronze? Why?" He started shaking Orion.

"Because it was an important word, you fucking idiot!"

Aulis stepped back, the color gone from his face. His hands flew up to the sides of his head, deep inhales following.

"What do you mean meant to be overheard?" Sarah asked. "You just said he took you somewhere quiet."

"Which would look suspicious! What better way to throw suspicion off himself than to make me look even guiltier?"

It was like a slap in the face to Sarah. Just when she thought she had narrowed down her suspicions to one person, more theories and doubts accompanied the concrete conversations and notes in her notebook. Her memory had no talent for remembering words verbatim, but she wrote it all down, fact. But the speculation of everything going on made her head spin. Pasia fortunately brought her out of her inwardness.

"Jareth, have your army meets us here and we will go at once to the chimera kingdom," she said. "Your war has also become a rescue mission, suspect or not."

"Where is Hoggle?" he asked the room.

"R-right here," Hoggle said, hobbling out from under a dead chimera, a dwarf-sized club in his hand. "Should have thought the thing would fall on top of me."

"We will keep General Orion under your constant supervision," Jareth said with a grin. Pointing at Orion's arms, something like a bracelet clamped over Orion's wrist. An identical one appeared on Hoggle's.

"What is this?"

"That will let Hoggle know the minute you try to take off. You cannot take his off of him, either. It's not that I've already found you guilty, but I do admit I take some pleasure out of you being bound to a dwarf," Jareth said. "Once we find Lysander, we will solve this once and for all and if innocent, you will be promoted for cooperating so well." A sneer shone on his face.

"I take that as a promise, your Highness!" Orion yelled, grimacing at Hoggle pinching him to move.

"Aulis?"

"Your Highness?"

"You will lead both yours and Garnet's brigades. Go back and alert the others. Now. By this afternoon, we will be at war."

XXXXX

A long formation of armed goblins and Sidhes marched along the paths. Sarah led one of the fur-covered horse creatures pulling a wagon of supplies near the back. Her legs thanked her for changing back into her jeans and running shoes, feeling pounds lighter after shedding the long skirts of her dresses and boots. Surrounded by soldiers with leather quivers and sleek swords, she still felt alone.

The sparkling, fertile hills along the sides of the paths reminded her of the stone house in the country where she started this "vacation" to the Underground. Those few days with Garnet differed so much from now, about to go to war, mentally practicing her manipulation of the crystals for mere survival. She had just been beginning to think this world safe, a nice place where she could trust everyone and let Toby run around to his heart's content. Strains of "This Used to Be My Playground" played in her mind.

"Just checking on you."

Pasia rode up on what must be the pony version of the animal Sarah led. The gorgeous queen in her leather uniform would have been the epitome of a classical warrior if not for the searching, hesitant look on her heart-shaped face.

"I'm fine, thank you."

"If you need anyone to help you with the wagon, any of my soldiers would be happy to assist you." She snapped her eyes shut at such a futile attempt.

"I can pull a wagon, Pasia," Sarah said, looking ahead of her. Please go. Please don't say anymore.

"I came to apologize to you." Her composure broke. "I only gave you the sangmagis to test a theory. I know it was thoughtless and I shouldn't have done it. You and Jareth seemed to be so comfortable with each other and…I don't claim to watch, but if I made things awkward or destroyed your friendship…I was hurt and my curiosity has often been my undoing." She continued rambling, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I felt like you had poisoned me," Sarah said, feeling the other woman's torture.

"It's true. Forgive me, Sarah. I only thought that if I could not have what I wanted, which I promise you is a passing fancy, you should take it and I wanted to see if I was right that, that you wanted…Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Sarah hated to just say, "oh, it's all right" and share some sort of girlish sigh before each one would almost kiss the other's cheek but stop just short of it.

"I think we'll eventually be all right, Pasia," she said, thinking that salvaged their fledgling friendship and her dignity.

Toby sat in the wagon, placing the food into packages to be dealt out at the next stopping point. He was safe and so content to be useful. Sarah sighed looking back at him. She would have to ask Jareth for more lessons to guard her brother…of course, she knew he wasn't her brother by blood anymore…and if she ever felt up to approaching Jareth again.

A/N: I do promise some eventual fluff, but no fluff is worth it without some angst. "This Used to Be My Playground" is a song by Madonna that was one of the most successful songs of the early 90s. I don't own Madonna, wouldn't want to, but I do want to own Labyrinth. Please leave reviews, people! Reading without leaving a review is like not flushing the toilet in the lady's room just because it's a public restroom and no one will be the wiser.


	12. Release Me

**A/N: This chapter contains strong language.**

"Your Highness, how am I supposed to lead with this, this pipsqueak nipping at my heels?"

Jareth's thoughts dissolved at the shrillness of Orion's voice, riding up next to him with Hoggle close behind. The two made quite the couple, Jareth thought, especially when the dwarf gave Orion a good jab with his stick.

"With a straight face if you can," Jareth answered. "How do you fare, Hoggle?"

"He's a bit uncooperative, sir, but we manage."

"Toby sends this package to you, Hoggle," Sarah said, riding up to them. Looking back, Jareth saw she delegated her wagon-pulling duty to one of the several armed troops marching behind him. She handed Hoggle a boxed-up snack consisting of fruit and a thick handful of dark bread. Nibbling on it, Hoggle smirked at the general after thanking Sarah.

"I want you to send Toby back," she said, turning her attention to him.

"Sarah, your timing…"

"Please." He couldn't look at her face upon hearing her say that word.

"I can't leave all these people around you for one child."

"But it's dangerous here!" she argued. "I'm sure you didn't mean to bring him, but he can't be here in the middle of this. Dad and Karen are probably worried sick, probably scared out of their minds because they don't know where their son…"

"I don't want to hear it," he interrupted. "It's out of the question."

Her eyes hardened. She turned her horse-creature around to go back to her wagon. He half-expected her to huff out, "that's not fair." The first time he had seen those eyes, it was a moment like this, her not getting her way and deciding to whine about it. She'd amused him on his random travels Aboveground and he often decided he would watch her to see what this imaginative child would conjure up next, always creating stories and retelling old ones to whomever she was with at the time. Always growing, he couldn't help noticing that each time he watched her, she was nearer and nearer to adulthood, and it was the day she came home in her lavender bridesmaid dress after seeing her father remarry, head resting on her vanity weeping as she looked every inch a princess, that he first felt the need to kiss her.

It was after she left the Underground that he stopped watching. Oh, he watched every so often, from far away, pleasantly shocked at how devoted she had become to her brother. But time stripped away the adolescent that defeated him and left instead a woman, a woman who left home to a university and had her meals with a few mediocre males of her species, and he could no longer watch.

"Jareth!"

Jerking his head around, a blanket of chimeras plunged down one of the boundless hills. The far left side of the goblin and Sidhe formation toppled over, the chimeras diving into them. It curdled the blood to hear the neighing of the horse creatures, some of them taken down to the ground.

Toby shoved the food to the sides of the wagon, his arms reeling like a dog burying a bone. All that lay in the wagon besides him and the food was a wool quilt, tucked away in a corner. Twisting it with his little hands, Toby blocked his head with it just in time to stop a chimera from sinking its teeth into his face. Crawling around, Toby wrapped the quilt around the monster's lion neck, dodging the snake head.

"Sarah!"

Running as fast as she could to him, Sarah threw off her jacket and twisted it around the snake head. She ignored the bleating of the goat head in the middle, pulling with all her strength. The tails of the chimera flapped in pain. She tugged even harder, her back against the wood of the wagon.

"Strangle it, Toby!" she screamed.

He tugged on the larger lion head, being dragged down to the floor of the wagon as well.

Sarah gave a final tug and scrambled to help Toby tug. The chimera gave out a spasm, its tongues sticking far out of their mouths. It collapsed.

"We did it!" she shouted, kissing the top of Toby's head.

In that second, something pulled Sarah back, sending her out of the wagon onto the ground. Wincing at the bone-hard dirt hitting her back, two chimeras each gripped a handful of her shirt at the shoulders and dragged her through the fighting formations. Screams and swords thrusting into flesh ran past Sarah's ears.

"Jareth!" she shrieked.

Fighting off one of the three-headed monsters, Jareth heard her and ran for her. Dirt flew up wherever she tried to kick her way free. He reached out to grab her, but with a sudden burst of mist, Sarah and her two assailants disappeared.

A few lingering chimeras not laying in pools of their own blood ran off and out of sight. Jareth immediately rushed to the wagon. Toby stared at the dead chimera inside the wagon with him, a quilt and a jacket still attached to two of its three necks. He lifted him out of the wagon, knowing it would do no good to cover his eyes against the small portion of dead goblins scattered throughout the field.

"We're miles from their kingdom. They must have known we were coming," Pasia said, running up to them. She sported a thick gash on her right shoulder, placing a bloodied arrow back into her quiver. "With any luck this will spread a nice infection to the next thing that tries to stop us. Is the little boy all right?"

"I'm fine," Toby answered, still in Jareth's arms. "Sarah?"

"They have Sarah?" Pasia gasped.

"I was too late," Jareth whispered.

"Orion?"

Jareth scanned the field. He found Orion with Hoggle close by, sword and knife still in hand respectively, both wide-eyed, but alive and standing. He stared out into the hills. First Lysander and now Sarah, he thought. The spineless idiot must have told them about her, settling to be a traitorous prisoner rather than hold his tongue under the torture.

"I can command everyone, Jareth, if you need to go after her."

Turning back to Pasia, he felt the rare feeling of not knowing what to say. Drop his whole military for her? Risk his kingdom for her?

"Take Toby." He handed Toby over to her. "Watch out for him."

"Of course."

"I want to come with you!" Toby said. "I can help."

Pasia and Jareth shared a look. It would be so much easier if one of them had actual children of their own.

"Toby, you can help me," Pasia offered. "Sarah will need us to secure a way out for her. Once Jareth frees her, we'll be the ones to make sure she can get out."

"Keep him away from Faren," Jareth warned.

"Jareth, every time you see a cow, does it make your mouth water?" she challenged. "But keeping him away from Faren is a good idea. He will be safe, trust me." She looked back at some of her soldiers, eyeing Toby. "Food packages are in the wagon for you! This child is not to be touched!"

She turned back to wish Jareth all the luck one could have, but he had already gone.

XXXXX

Sarah awoke to discover her feet shackled to the wall of a medieval prison with an odor that made her nostrils flare. The putrid mix of mold and poorly cleaned fecal matter brought water to her eyes. Empty shackles dangled from the walls with some strewn about the floor for feet like what held her in place. To her left, iron bars distorted her view into a long hallway lit with candles. Closing her eyes with a groan, she reached up with her hand to feel a knot on her head. She tried to dodge that rock along the makeshift path the two chimeras forged for her on her way over here. This must be their kingdom, she thought.

Shit, she thought, the key. She turned her back to the bars separating her from light and freedom and felt for the key. Tucked safely into her camisole under her shirt, she breathed a sigh of relief. She had not seen Orion during the ambush, but it seemed…but he wasn't the one who said something about the key.

"Comfortable, Lady Sarah?"

"You did want to be overheard when you called Orion over to talk."

Lysander opened the door and strolled into the cell.

"I had hoped someone would have heard, glad you did," he said. "Of course, Orion did make it easy mentioning the bronze on his own. And now, I have a few things I want to know from you."

"The attack at the castle was staged?" she asked, hoping for a nice monologue that would stall whatever torture she would undergo.

"I think you know it was." He leaned his face in, inches away from hers. "And now, if you'll hand over the key?"

Sarah closed her eyes, concentrating as best she could on the key being able to disappear. The chimeras couldn't release the Minotaur, not while the key was in her possession.

"What key?"

A broad slap across the face answered her question. Her hand flew to her cheek, almost able to feel the red blotch spreading across her face from the blow.

"I've spent too long spying on your parents to not know about the key. It was not on her when I sent them to the house, so she must have given it to you. Give it to me, Sarah, and you shall live and be sent home."

"Home to my house I've inherited because of you, or back Aboveground?"

"Enough stalling! I can make you talk. Make it easy on yourself and tell me where it is. I can search you if I thought you actually had it. Perhaps you sent it away with your little brother when you sent the king on another errand taking him back."

Sarah said nothing.

"Damn it, Sarah!" He slapped her other cheek, much harder, her head reeling back against the wall. "It's this kind of hubris that made us decide to release the Minotaur in the first place."

"You're not putting the Minotaur in the Labyrinth?"

"I should not have thought such a feeble mind could comprehend out plans. We mean to unleash it in your world. All your tanks and bombs are no match for the evil that created such a thing, and after years and years of isolation, it will be hungry for your species' blood. And then the superior race that should rule an entire world will have control."

She sensed that was all a monologue she was going to get, but it was enough. She stayed silent, smirking.

"Does such a plan sound impossible to you?"

"It's not that," she forced a laugh. "I think you need to realize you need me. I'll tell you where the key is."

"Smart girl."

"But first I have a few demands."

"Insolent girl! What could you possibly feel you can demand?"

"I want the unconditional submission of your ruler. If it wants to rule my world, it has to rule it under Jareth and Pasia's command." She continued in spite of Lysander's startled expression. "And since you're going to keep me here, I want this place to smell like fresh cut flowers instead of shit, a spell or something that guarantees none of you will touch Toby's parents, and a Whopper from Burger King with no onions."

"Tell me where the key is, or the pain shall begin and all you love will die before we allow you the same courtesy."

"Guess you're just fucked then," she said, folding her arms and bracing herself for a blow.

Instead, Lysander's head began to split, the three parts shifting like liquid through his body. Each one grew a snout, two growing hair, and one with coin-like scales clanking out of his skin. Before the transformation could be completed, the sections shifted back to his shoulders and he looked exactly like a goblin again. Still astounded by what she saw, she didn't see his lion claws dig into her chest.

Crying out, she clutched her chest, covering the blood beginning to drip onto the floor. The deep red reminded her of Garnet's robes, even her beautiful name.

"I'll leave you to think it over," Lysander said, exiting through the gate. The slam of it closing deafened her.

It couldn't end this way. Generations of her family protected this key, even building a house around it to keep it away from people with ideas exactly like this. She couldn't be the one to make them all lose now. She just couldn't.

"I wish the goblins would come and take me away," she said with closed eyes, but nothing happened. The blank wall with its shackles still stared back at her, the stifling smell still lingering in the air. Jareth wouldn't be able to hear her. No one would. She let her head rest against the wall, tears welling up at the agony bursting out of her chest. Would he even come after her? Something told her he would.

Being back in his world, back in his presence, had been intoxicating. None of the men she'd dated in college seemed to "do it for her," as her friends would say. They either bored her or she bored them. But being back with him, working with him, was more rewarding than anything she'd experienced in her life. Yes, he wouldn't let her down. He would make sure she wouldn't die of this wound in her chest, take her back into a room especially prepared for her.

Huh, she thought. He had kissed her back, with the greatest fervor she'd ever felt. There had always been a room just for her if he'd felt that way for years. She'd blocked out that part of her adventure, never wanting to play his words back in her mind. Well, she would be able to respond to whatever he had to say this time. If only she could find a way out…

A few former prisoners scratched things into the walls next to her, like the old movies of prisoners in black and white stripes tallying the days, maybe months, they spent in the slammer. She saw in English a familiar name and fingered it. Garnet had been here?

The moment she touched the name, a light shone on the floor from the spot on the wall, like a laser. Sound waves were suddenly visible, vibrating as a voice spoke.

"My dear Sarah, if you are listening to this recording, it means I have failed and you have the key now. I will not undermine your work by mentioning it more. Your listening to this also means you have been captured. Like mother like daughter, I suppose. I am still trying to find a way out, but I want you to know: I have always loved you and watched you. Rest assured, you have all the qualities necessary to guard this key and keep the Aboveground safe. Don't give up, my sweet. It is the hope of one day being able to see you that keeps me looking for a means of escape."

Openly crying, Sarah wiped her eyes as the light faded away. If Garnet found a way out, that means she could get out herself. Think, Sarah, think. I won't let you down, Garnet. I'll find a way out of here.

**A/N: Release Me is a 1991 song. A special cyber pat on the back to anyone that can list who sings each of the songs making up the chapters of this story. I also don't own Labyrinth. Now with that out of the way, what is going to happen to poor Sarah?**


	13. Take My Breath Away

"Food time," coughed out a gravelly voice from the other side of the bars. Sarah craned her neck to find a waddling goblin with a tray of ground up meat blinking its bug eyes at her.

"What is it?"

"Don't know," it said, sniffing the contents. "Just picked it up from the kitchen, but it's hot, and something tells me it smells like dog."

"Dog, huh?" Nothing surprised her here anymore. "What's your name?"

"Happert," he said, taking her hands with his clammy ones and making her clasp the tray. "You gonna eat?"

"I don't think so. Happert, what time is it?"

"Close to sunset, prisoner. The king of the chimeras…" He clasped his disproportionate hands over his mouth. "I'll take the tray if you're not gonna eat. The king promises me a bride if I do my job well."

"What is your job?" she asked, surprised to see a goblin, even a lower-one, here amongst their enemy.

"Wardon." Happert, about the size of Toby, folded his long arms and beamed at the sound of his own position. "All this time, no more poker for Happert, just feed the prisoner, feed that prisoner, keep that prisoner quiet."

"I have a servant about your size, Happert," Sarah said. "Her name is Aschenputt. The two of you look like you could be brother and sister." She bit her lip and changed her tone. "By that, I just mean that you would look very, very nice together."

"You think her handsome, prisoner?"

"Very much." She nodded. "Sings like an angel too."

"And you really think we would be a match?"

"A match as regal as two ballroom dancers," she said. "If only I could get out of here…"

From the corner of her eye, she saw Happert place a large hand on one of the many pockets of his trousers. Straining to keep from smiling, she formed the most mundane stare she could.

"But you can't help me, can you?" she sighed.

"N-no, prisoner. Happert, I mean, I'm just a wardon." He shook his head so violently Sarah thought he would spasm and collapse to the floor. "I couldn't take ye to the keys or the push you out the door or nothing like that. And it is a shame. I'd like a bride who is pretty and can sing and would make Happert, me, look like a strapping dancer."

"Oh, she also is one of the champion poker players of the whole Underground," Sarah added, hearing the little goblin grunt in anguish. "I'll tell you what, Happert. I like you."

"You, you do?"

"Yes, and I like Aschenputt and I think I know true love when I see it. If you can answer a riddle I have, then you'll have proven yourself and can go with me to claim her. Does that sound fair?" She observed the hesitation in Happert. "See, it wouldn't be helping me if you earned the right. It's not helping if you expect something in exchange. Do you see?"

"I do see! Oh, good prisoner, can you really do that for me?"

"If you answer this riddle." Seeing Happert clap his scaly hands together and nod, she began, "I have a heart that never beats/I have a home but never sleep/I can take a mans house and build another/And I love to play games with my many brothers/I am a king among fools/Who am I?"

Happert closed his eyes and folded his arms. His tongue sticking out just slightly, Sarah could smell the overheating happening to his brain. Please, she thought. It's not that hard, even for a goblin. Seeing his eyes were still closed, Sarah summoned a crystal with all the speed she could. She concentrated, picturing what she needed it to become. Blocking out the gravelly voice repeating, "heart" and "fools," she felt the crystal soften in her hand, stretching out and fluffing up into a white linen handkerchief with a wet substance in the center. She hoped it would be enough.

"Time's up," she said. "Do you have a guess?"

"Oh!" Happert pulled on his ears. "It is a hard one."

"I know it is. But this is as long as I can allow you to think. There's no consequence if you get it wrong."

"Something dead?" he half-guessed, knowing it was wrong.

"I'm sorry, Happert. I really am." She waited for him to come closer to her, anxious to hear the answer. "The answer is the King of Hearts."

"Cards! Of course. Oh, prisoner. Maybe I will make myself worthy of another riddle sometime to win the fair Aschenputt."

"Of course," she said. He was within her reach now. "Happert?" She paused, waiting for the goblin to lean in further. "There is a consequence for getting it wrong."

In an instant, she smashed the handkerchief up to Happert's nose. Breathing in the chloroform she hoped she conjured correctly, Happert soon slumped to the hard floor without a sound.

Flipping him over, Sarah grabbed the set of keys from the pocket he fingered moments ago and tried each key for the one that would free her ankles from the chains. At last, one of them unclasped the lock and she took a minute to roll her ankles and let them savor their first few seconds of freedom.

"Come on, feet," she ordered and tiptoed to the bars. No other warden seemed to be patrolling the hall. The other cells even seemed empty. A size zero could fit through these bars, she thought. She tried each key one by one until one fit into the lock. The process of the unlocking was louder than the shackles inside the cell, but the hall still seemed to hold just her. Closing the gate behind her, Sarah hopped to the other side of the long hall and pressed her back against the wall. If she could just see where the hall led, she might be able to get out of here.

It seemed a clear path—a well lit, open hallway leading to an oaken door whose slots showed a purplish, soft sky outside. It couldn't be that easy, but she would have to try.

She settled for shuffling her feet along the edge of the hallway rather than making a run of it. Her feet tended to clomp. Almost there. She could feel the cool breeze of the outside caress her hair just barely. Gripping the set of keys as tightly as she could, she knew one of them would unlock that heavy door if it turned out to be locked, which, in theory, it should be.

"Who's there?" a voice called from the other end of the hallway where it turned in to an office of sorts.

Making a run for it sounded awfully good now.

Inhaling, Sarah broke into a run, arms outreached for the knob of the door. In a few seconds, she would be outside the prison, outside the shackles, the torture, the smell…

As if she rammed right into an invisible wall, Sarah felt the air leave her gut, reeling back to the ground and landing on her tailbone.

"Sarah?" she heard.

"I know that voice," she whispered, gaining momentum to hop to her feet. Jareth materialized right before her. "Guess I ran into you."

"Clumsy," he scolded in a mocking way. "Come."

"Just take us back to the goblins," she said, taking the hand that was leading her to the door.

"That kind of magic seems to have been prevented," he said. "One has to physically enter and leave."

Constantly turning back to keep watch, she missed whether the door had been unlocked or not, for in an instant, she was being led through it and out into a shadowy stack of black trees. She took in the chimera kingdom, still a beautiful, luscious environment, but darker somehow, like a Gothic castle overlooking a wolf-filled wilderness in a vampire novel. Jareth looked back, almost as if he thought she would disappear before his eyes.

He'd come for her. She knew she'd been the one to knock out that stupid little creature and find the right key to the bars, but her child brain still shouted out to her "He saved you! He saved you!" Her heart raced at the danger of entering the classic forbidden forest with the goblin king.

"Here. Keep holding on." He seemed to be concentrating. "Damn. We'll have to get further away from the prison before I can take us to the others."

"Toby? Was he all right? The thought of him left with the Sidhe…" She imagined him in a large vat filled with bubbling water where Faren and several witches in pointy hats chopped carrots all around him.

"Sarah, every time you see a cow, can you not control your hunger?" He rolled his eyes at paraphrasing Pasia's own chastisement. "Toby's fine. Are you…you are. You're hurt."

"No. No, I'm not. I'm fine, the key's fine. Maybe we should start moving." A stoic cross-armed king stared back at her. She closed her eyes at the memory of Lysander's claw slashing away at her chest. "I want to see the key destroyed."

"First you'll show me where you're hurt." He paused, seeing that look of challenge on her face that he would never tell her he loved. "If you left a trail of blood, you'll weaken and we'll be tracked. The chimeras have an excellent sense of smell."

"And an excellent sense of how to make other things smell," she mumbled, pulling down the collar of her shirt just low enough for him to see the top of the gnarled, angry wound peeking out from her pale chest. She held her breath when his fingertips touched it, shivering at the sensation such a simple touch gave her.

"Savages," he whispered, mostly to himself. But she caught it, and the horror on his face. "It was to tell him where the key was, wasn't it?"

"More like punishment for not saying anything. But it's nice to have a battle scar." Looking down at her wound, she saw something like ice chips glaze over it, cleaning it from the inside out. The trail of frozen magic followed where his fingertips went, leaving a healthy-looking, normal scab.

"It's the best I can do," he said with a shrug. "Try not to start collecting these." A smile finally appeared on his face, replacing the concern that dominated it earlier.

"Aw, scars make fun stories."

"Not as fun as stories where you give the other one a scar." A grin that was contagious spread across his face and she grinned back. "It hasn't stolen your beauty."

Jareth leaned in just a little, lost in the admiring eyes staring up at him. He knew better than to expect she would wait around locked up without at least devising a way out, but the pain she must have felt—the creeping feeling that hopelessness caused even when it only lingered in the air. With a snap, he took his fingers off of her chest, but not before grazing her collarbone so slightly.

"We'll move as far as we can now and stop for the night if we must," he said.

Finding their way through the heavily-branched woods was easy, if not time-consuming due to just maneuvering around them. Every few feet Jareth attempted to transport back to Toby and their allies, but the enchantment seemed spread to even the borders of the forest. He was sure by the time they found the other side, which should lead to the outskirts of the chimeras' kingdom, they would be able to find the camp. Holding Sarah's hand with one hand and holding out in front of him a lit crystal in the other, they ducked under more spindly branches.

"I used a crystal to take out a guard," she bragged just when the crescent moon bent back the treetops to look down on them.

"I assumed you would do something like that," he said. "Not everyone you run into will be a Hoggle you can just charm into helping you."

"Charmed isn't the word I would use," she laughed. "But I felt it came easier that time, when I needed it."

"They say if you need to do, do not think." She didn't ask who "they" were, but they made a point.

"It was so, so automatic."

Jareth stayed in front of her, not caring for her to see the front of him at the moment—the power she still held over him, and the thought of her wielding crystals, defeating labyrinths, guarding a little key so easy to lose could be too much for him to keep his control. He preferred his persona of the phlegmatic goblin king, always so many steps ahead of everyone else he could circle around them and ensnare them before they were even aware of the fact. But she took away all of it, leaving him bare skin and bones. And yet, he thought, when she was with him, he was the strongest being in existence, able to steer away any hand that even might think of touching one hair on her head.

"What's happened these seven years since I was here?" he heard her ask.

"Nothing half as eventful as a few stupid goblins wishing you would wish your baby brother away."

"Nothing?" she prodded. "Nothing in the news at all?"

"I'm sure you being you, you're inclined to think this world has an adventure every second of the day, but we do go through idle years."

"Ah," she said. "I was just trying to think of something to pass the time."

He could think of a few things they could do to pass the time, but since she had the graciousness to avoid mentioning his failed serenade and seduction of her, he would do her the honor of keeping quiet about the erotic, tantric things taking place in his mind.

"Tell me one of your stories," he suggested.

"A story? You sound like Toby."

"To sound like Toby, I would have to go all the way back to the days prior to puberty, dear Sarah. You've always had a talent for them. I won't laugh…unless you tell me something funny."

XXXXX

"Where can they be?" Pasia paced around a campfire, countless black tents surrounding her. "We will have to press on whether they are here tomorrow or not."

"We're waiting until tomorrow?" Faren asked. "Pasia, we're already missing out on a night attack. We can still rally everyone and go now."

"What if they have the king as a hostage now? And have the key?" Aulis interrupted. "If we attack and put all our forces out there now, it may be for nothing. We should wait at least until dawn."

"Dawn?" Faren repeated. "Pasia, you can't listen to a goblin about these matters. By dawn our soldiers will be hungrier than they were tonight and they'll eye that little boy, asleep in his tent and…"

"You will not say another word about that particular little boy," she hushed him. "We wait until dawn for Jareth to bring back Sarah and then we move forward."

"Whether they're here or not?"

"Whether they're here or not." She glanced over at Aulis, who nodded his approval.

XXXXX

"I knew you could tell a story," Jareth said, listening to the latest Sarah Williams original, a tale of a man walking across a bridge, unaware of the fact the friend whose girlfriend he stole was coming down the other end of the bridge, all set for an attack that started out with a satisfying punch in the face. "Inspired by a failed…what did you call them before? Dates?"

"Inspired only by the imagination," she said with a smile. She had yet to meet someone who did not enjoy her stories, although she did steer away from telling him one of her more fairytale stories. "Now you have to pass the time."

"All right," he sighed, thinking of something he could do. ""At night they come without being fetched/And by day they are lost without being stolen.' What are they?"

She closed her eyes, trusting he would still lead her through the bramble of the forest, so she could think. She knew so many of these, but this one she had not heard before. "I don't know."

"You barely thought about it."

Sarah tried, imagining every object in the cluttered file cabinets of her mind, but nothing was leaping out at her. She shook her head. "I give up."

"Something to ponder."

"You aren't going to tell me?""Certainly not," Jareth said. "I came up with it myself, my riddle. I can enjoy besting you at something for a little while."

"You- you arrogant…" she trailed off with an amused expression and shoved his shoulder. Turning around, he mocked her half-hearted violence with a shove on her own shoulder. Pushes quickly escalated into taking the other by the waist and trying to drive the other one to the ground.

"This is how you pass the time?" he laughed with a pant, twisting around until he was behind her with his arms still around her, trying to force her to the ground first.

"Whatever works," was his answer before a swift elbow in the ribs made him release her. Catching her before she could scamper away, he decided if he would go down he would take her with him and they plopped to the ground in the most ungraceful fall. Her hair flew back into his face. His wrists felt the delicate lines of her thin torso through her shirt. Slightly out of breath, her throat caught at remembering the fact that they were touching each during their whole rumble.

"Afraid you lost your own rumble?" she teased, not looking back at him.

"Rumble? We're not Sharks and Jets, I don't think." He hardly waited for an inquiry. "Yes, Sarah, even goblins manage to see _West Side Story_."

"My mistake."

He breathed her in, so close, so real. She was no longer just an image, but in his world, talking to him, laughing with him. He wouldn't be able to let her go if she left this time. If he even began to offer her all he possessed as he did before and she rejected him as she did before…he tightened his embrace he had around her waist. Her neck so close, which would lead to a flushed cheek, and then to those lips. His own brushed up against her white neck and scrolled up and down.

"Jareth," she breathed, not stopping what he was doing. She didn't know if that was the first time she'd said his name out loud, but it seemed to fuel something in him, for he moved down to the fragile skin where her neck met her shoulder, tightening his hold around her waist even more.

Finally turning, she met his lips with hers. Keeping her eyes closed, she cupped his face, contorting around so she sat across from him, his arms still around her. She didn't fight it when he bent her backward, laying her down on a soft patch of the forest floor, planting the softest kisses across her cheeks, her forehead, her hairline, her nose, and back to her swollen lips. She didn't know why, but she hadn't expected him to be so, so…tender, whispering her name between his kisses like it was the end of a prayer.

"I love you, Sarah."

A/N: Aw! I bet a lot of you are glad to hear that. Please leave reviews. I know these chapters are getting a lot of hits, but not reviews. The two go hand in hand, like peanut butter and jelly, Cheech and Chong, and well, Jareth and Sarah from the sounds of it. "Take My Breath Away" is of course from the overrated movie Top Gun, a 1986 hit.


	14. Bust a Move

Pasia watched through puffy, blood-shot eyes while the sun peeked over the horizon. They would call her bluff and make her lead the camped formation without Jareth or the charming human she grew to find pleasant. Sarah in the keep of chimeras made her shudder.

"They aren't here yet," a voice said behind her.

"I'll ready the troops in just a moment, Aulis," she said, turning back towards him. "I'm sure Sarah's fine."

"She's my step-daughter," he said with a hint of defeat. "When Garnet…when Sarah came back to this world, I promised I would watch over her and make sure she was safe."

"What's all this now?"

"Hoggle!" Aulis raised his eyebrow at him. "How long were you there listening?"

"Long enough for that tripe about you not keepin' her safe. Get back over here!" He yanked on a crudely fashioned chain, forcing Orion to stumble a few steps forward.

"Lady Sarah's being gone has nothing to do with me!"

"Yeah, yeah, pipe down." Hoggle turned back to them. "Have you tried using magic?"

"Hoggle," Aulis sighed, "I can't hear her if she's calling me. I have a formation to care for and if the king and I are gone…"

"Call her."

"Call her?" Pasia asked. "She knows that kind of magic?"

"She was being trained," Aulis said more to himself than to anyone else. "Goblin-born couldn't wipe every trace of magic from her." He ran out to a clearing. "Your highness, rouse the troops. I have to try this."

"You're welcome," Hoggle muttered.

"Sarah."

Everyone froze, as if Sarah would sense their movement and opt to stay wherever the monsters held her. Their eyes darted to and fro, scanning for the faintest trace of a moving body. Aulis hung his head. Approaching Pasia, he put a hand on her shoulder.

"We have to go."

A beam of fire ran right between their heads. Through the trees, two figures bolted through, turning their backs to the stunned observers. Behind them, a snarling chimera clawed at their backs and yelped at the crystals flung at its heads. Jareth managed to stretch his crystal out into a staff and beat the winding serpent head. Sarah busied herself hurling her own crystal fireballs at the lion head.

"Make it change its form!" she screamed.

Pasia, Aulis, Hoggle, and Orion sprinted to them. The wild-eyed chimera whirled its many heads at its enemies. Sarah crawled away, clutching the key grazing her chest. She saw the beast topple to the ground, allowing her to reach it and place the key on it. In seconds, its body shifted and slithered around like she saw Lysander's body do. A grotesque caricature of a human head poked out from the gel-like fusing of the three heads.

"Do you know where the Minotaur is?" she demanded, grinding the key into the pug-like face wincing at the cold metal sensation.

"Med…" it hissed, coughing at its own speech. "Sea. Must…find…human with key." It stuck out its beady eyes, panning the surroundings for a human. Sarah gulped. Maybe it was crazed, or maybe it assumed she wasn't human. Or maybe it didn't realize the very key it wanted was what made it transform into a human.

"It's delirious," Pasia said, obviously thinking exactly what Sarah was.

"Who is Lysander?" Sarah asked. "Talk!"

"Spy working…king." Its new voice cracked as it panted.

"Say more!"

"Sent on mission…by king spy on king goblins. Find key." From there, its sickening glassy eyes went still.

"Med Sea?" Aulis asked.

"Mediterranean," she breathed. She caught Jareth's eye, and then snapped her attention to Hoggle. "Hoggle, you can unchain Orion now."

"As you wish, Sarah."

"No hard feelings, I hope?" The corner of Sarah's mouth turned up, hoping smiles were contagious.

"None whatsoever. I would have done the same."

"I believe that," Hoggle said. "Where's the little one?"

"Toby!" Sarah gasped. "Where's Toby?"

"In his tent there." Pasia pointed to the nearest tent to her. "It hasn't been out of my sight."

"Pasia, you'll have to lead everyone to battle. The chimera king must die," Jareth, who had kept silent all this time, spoke.

"Myself?"

"I must take Sarah to the Mediterranean Sea to destroy the Minotaur."

"And this key," she added.

"Not without me," Aulis said. She looked at him. "I don't know that I want you out of my sight. Toby can come with us if you would be more comfortable."

"Toby will stay here," she said. A brief idea of having Jareth send him back to Dad and Karen flashed through her mind, but she abandoned it. He would just call out again even if Jareth agreed to take him. She didn't want to ask…

"We were so afraid you weren't coming back." Pasia scooted next to her and wrapped her arms around her. She quickly broke from the embrace upon seeing the dead chimera before them. "Wait. I'll dispose of this." She flicked her hand and the earth beneath the corpse opened, sealing the body into the ground. "I bet you were waiting to see the Sidhe control the element earth, weren't you?"

Sarah didn't have the heart to tell Pasia that prior to just a short while ago, she had never heard of the Sidhe at all.

"I was so worried," Pasia continued. "How did you escape?""I used what I learned to, uh, incapacitate the guard and…we navigated our way through the woods until we heard I was called."

"I knew it would work!" Aulis cheered. "Brilliant thinking, Sarah. Your powers will be unstoppable if you continue with them."

"About how long are the woods of their kingdom?" Orion asked.

"I'm not sure," she said.

Jareth said nothing when Orion looked to him for an answer.

"It's just to ask to make sure you weren't seen."

"Touching faith you have in me, Orion," Jareth scolded with the mocking tone everyone recognized by now.

"Forgive me, sir, but I like to know the environment we'll be entering when you leave. Is it very thick with foliage?"

"Well," Sarah trailed off, turning her head to Jareth, who had his lips pressed together in silence.

"Well what were you doing in there?"

"Pasia, you'll want to get an early start." Jareth rose. "Look after Toby. Aulis, if you're coming…"

"Yes, sir, coming." With his superior returned, Aulis took on once again his reserved demeanor, although it was not without a new layer of confidence.

"Sarah, wait." Pasia went to them as the three were crossing into the clearing to leave. "Your shirt is all torn in the back. Here. I give to you a new one." She pulled off her outer smock to reveal a tunic-like vest she fastened over Sarah's torn shirt. "One cannot have stored too many clothes."

"Sidhe," Orion muttered.

"The forest must be cruel to tear your beautiful human clothes," Pasia sighed, mourning what she deemed the death of the "exotic" human garment.

"Yes…the forest," Sarah said, gazing at the ground. "If we don't come back, do what you can to send Toby home."

"He will be watched over and you will see him home yourself." Pasia kissed her forehead. Running back to the vast lines of tents, she yelled, "On your feet! Pack up! We attack with the sun!"

Sarah stayed just long enough to see Toby stretch and yawn while coming out of his tent, and then ran back into the woods with her companions. She would see to it this key with her name on it never read any of her family's name again. It should have been destroyed a long time ago.

XXXXX

"The answer's stars," she said, standing on a rocky shore on a Greek isle. The waves crashing against the jagged, filmy rocks veiled in seaweed only emphasized how expansive this sea was. It looked so small on the globe.

"I had no idea it would be this big," Aulis said, his cheeks flushed by the harsh wind and strong sun.

"What?" Jareth asked, looking at her.

"Your riddle. Stars. Isn't that right?"

"It is."

Aulis glanced back and forth. Before she'd disappeared, Sarah had seemed to have a closeness with the king. There had been, well, he dared to call it chemistry, but since they came back to safety, they all but avoided each other, speaking warmly and with civility, but without touching or the patience before. He hopped down onto the rocks, pretending to examine the sapphire sea before him. Wondering for only a second if all the Aboveground looked this way, he turned back to them.

"What's your plan, Sarah?""I…" Her mouth snapped shut. "I was hoping the key would glow or something and be able to tell us if we were close. Before, the Minotaur legend started on Crete, but I don't even know if this is the right island or not. My guess is no."

"It says your name on it for a reason," Aulis said. "It helped you survive the forest, remember."

He took note of the awkward glance Jareth and Sarah gave each other.

"I'm going to go into the town. I'm sure as touristy as this region is, someone will be able to speak English. I'll find out what island we're on." She picked up her legs over the warm sand and headed for town, her face already absorbing more sun than it was probably used to absorbing.

"Imagine torturing such a sweet girl," Aulis said out loud. He'd seen Garnet do this to the king several times. It could not possibly be that difficult to force an answer out of him.

"Fortunately she was not there long."

"Yes, a resourceful girl, much like her mother." Aulis bit his lip, hoping the pain would distract him from the tears welling up in his eyes. I'm sorry, Garnet, he thought. I was trying to find information and just had to start thinking of you again.

"She will be honored like no other when this affair is all over," Jareth said, still looking out into the town. "And you will be rewarded."

"No reward is necessary," he said. "I'm sure Sarah inherited that house. It is hers to do with what she likes since it seems it was just a reason for the key. It is a fitting quality of her family—methods behind their actions."

Opening his mouth, Jareth changed his mind when she returned, panting from running through the dense sand.

"We're actually not that far from Crete," Sarah gasped, bending over for just a second to catch her breath. "If the Minotaur was imprisoned, I'm sure it would be sent back to where it came from. No other culture mentions a creature just like it. Well, ancient cultures had a lot of man-animal legends, but nothing like this. I'm positive it's on Crete, hidden away somewhere."

XXXXX

The clang of metal against metal banged on Pasia's ears. A few of the chimeras seemed to possess Lysander's gift for shape-shifting, albeit not at such a sophisticated level. They were men and women in the sense they could walk upright and wield a sword, but most stayed on four legs as snarling, rabid creatures who went for the goblins' and Sidhes' jugulars.

Sliding past her chimera and ramming her sword into its front leg, she jerked her head back around.

"Toby? Toby!"

"Pasia!" yelled a small voice from the treetops. Looking up, Pasia spotted Toby lodged between the branches of one of the winding trees, throwing stones at a roaring chimera with its front legs already halfway up the trunk.

She broke into a run, wrapping her arms around the main body. It bucked underneath her, sending her legs into the air.

Scrambling down the gnarled branches, Toby's little body landed a few feet from the lion mouth. He picked up a knife one of the countless soldiers must have lost, and sliced at the lion face. The other two faces yelped, the front paws covering the lion eyes. It lowered its head, unable to fight off the Sidhe queen on its back and the little boy pestering it from the front.

Pasia leapt off and picked up her fallen sword. Shoving Toby as far away as only one of her arms could, she drove it into the chimera's back.

"I got you!" she shouted, snatching him back. All around them, more of the same occurred. Her eyes darted every which way. Bodies of all species lay strewn about the entire field, creating a blanket of bones and blood over the scarlet-stained tall grass.

"Come with me," she ordered Toby, dashing up one of the hills. "It's time you learned one spell."

She closed her eyes and blew on the roots of the plentiful pine trees towering over their heads. The earth released them, sending the gargantuan trunks plummeting to the ground. Pasia helped Toby dodge them, hurrying to the rest of them and blowing on the roots that attached them to the soil.

"Blow on them like this, and then be careful to get out of the way," she whispered, resisting the urge to look down into the valley field where her people and Jareth's were dying right along with the beasts that started the entire conflict in the first place. She watched Toby narrow his eyebrows in concentration, blowing the trees down. Debris flew up, but the dust cleared.

"Now blow on the trunks. Roll them together." She demonstrated. The trunks rolled together in a neat line, creating one massive log after another. "Now, Toby! Breathe on them even harder. That's it!"

The logs barreled down the hill, crashing into whoever stood in their path. She could hear choruses of "look out" echo all around, the goblins and Sidhe diving out of the way while the tree trunks pummeled the chimeras. She and Toby released the rest of them, each one crashing into at least one of the monsters on its tumble down.

"What now?" Toby asked, eyes still wide, his cheeks puffy.

"We find the king and the traitor," she said with hard eyes. She raced down the hill, stopping to secure Toby's footing. Her legs were longer despite being nearly the same height as he was. It must frustrate little humans that it takes them so long to grow, she thought. The brave boy was growing on her, she had to admit. She would have to outlaw the eating of humans if she made it out alive.

"Up there!"

His observation tore her from her thoughts. Pasia looked up. On the adjacent hill, a chimera stood, looming over the action, yet paced with silent steps. It was as if it was stalking the entire battle itself, ready for the opportune moment to pounce.

"That must be the king. Come!" They ran to the backside of the hill, soundless in their footsteps. "Toby, I want you to stay here."

"No!" he hissed through his teeth.

"Yes, please. I won't have their king see you. It would just bring Sarah back here."

Their eyes locked for a split second—hers pleading his stubborn pair. Finally, he wedged himself between two wild shrubs dark enough to hide his fleshy pink skin. She shuddered at the fact that would have been appetizing to her not so long ago. Patting him on the head, she made the climb up. Her fingertips ached with each hard, dusty rock she grabbed to hoist herself up. Pebbles made way for her by hurling themselves down. Struggling to control her breathing, her hands patted the top of the hill before she peeked at the plateau.

There was no sign of the chimera.

Throwing a leg over, she pulled herself up, managing to hold out her knife. Finally standing upright once again, she replaced her knife with her sword, ready to hunt. There weren't many hiding places on the flat top of the hill. In fact, there were none. Her eyes widened in horror.

The chimera king had disappeared.

A/N: I know. It's a little short, but I hope you like it anyway. I'm sure you have a lot of questions, and they will all be answered in time. Oh, and I didn't get a chance to own Labyrinth between now and the last chapter, so none of the original characters or storylines belong to me. Please review!


	15. Every Rose Has Its Thorn

They had found a cave. Down past the slimy rocks that cascaded down to a narrow beach, the key had begun to glow. They followed. At least that's how simple it had seemed to Sarah. The salty air swept away from her when she entered the mouth of the cave, an unfamiliar odor replacing it. Her nostrils twitched at the scent of what smelled like a stable constructed out of dirty laundry. A few sharp inhales were enough for her.

"Do you see anything?" Aulis called to her, he and Jareth close behind.

"Not yet. The key's still glowing," she called back, whispering to herself, "Come on, feet." They were reluctant to walk out on their own down the small jagged rocks to the floor of the cave, but she willed them to do so. It wasn't as if there would be anything for her if she turned around now.

Almost radiant enough to serve as a flashlight, she let the key guide her down the widening path. Yes, the smell of the sea didn't exist down here, she noticed.

_"I love you, Sarah."_

She shook her head at her memory. It's neither the time nor the place for that, she scolded herself. And to just lie there like an imbecile and not say anything back must have felt like a gunshot right through the heart to him.

_"Do…do you feel the same?"_

_Sarah could only bite her lip more. After those lonely years in college when everyone around her had met their soul mates, or at least people they slept with enough to convince they were soul mates, she finally heard those words. Her heart raced at the words and her mouth opened. Yes, say them back. You feel it. You won't want to leave here again._

_But she would. She had the rest of her education, her family, her life waiting for her. What did she have here? A dead mother? A Sidhe queen that was wickedly jealous of her, serving her magic drinks left and right? And what if the king of the goblins did love her? Hadn't he always?_

"Sarah, wait for us. You're too far ahead," Aulis called her back to the present.

"There aren't any turns. You should catch up to me soon."

Looking ahead, she saw the cave had an ending, the two lines of the path that seemed parallel to her converged. Her feet felt the adrenaline rush the rest of her did and now begged to sprint to the end and find the hidden treasure that might put an end to all this.

_Jareth stood, backing away from her, an unreadable expression on his face._

_"Jareth.." Why? Why couldn't she just leap into his arms and vow to never leave them? She loved him, loved him so much she knew her life when she went back would be so empty._

_"I don't want to hear."_

When she heard their footsteps, she turned back around and marched to the end of the path, the end of the cave. It was a glass coffin right out of Snow White's legend, if injected with a substantial amount of steroids. She tapped the glass with her fingertips. Tinted, she had to press her forehead against the glass to see inside. Deeper than it appeared, she could see the outline of a man's chest, an enormous chest. She stood back and spread her arms out to her side. The chest equaled the distance from her left hand to her right hand.

"Sarah," Aulis panted. They caught up to her and she hadn't even heard them. "What is that?"

"It's what the key will open," Jareth finally spoke, looking above him. The coffin, standing on its end, stretched well above their heads. Maybe not Godzilla size, Sarah pondered, but it would probably give King Kong a run for his money.

"That thing could destroy a city in a matter of minutes," she breathed, tracing the rim of the coffin until she found the lock. "Does it know magic?"

"If its wielder knows magic, there's no reason to think it's not unstoppable," he said. It was the first words he spoke to her since the words "I don't want to hear" carved themselves into her heart.

"How do we destroy it?" she asked.

"You don't." Before she could turn, she felt a hard blow to her side, sending her reeling to the hard ground. Batting her eyes, Sarah could see Jareth run up the wall of the cave, out of the way of two snarling chimeras, one of them transforming in its grotesque way. The bones melted away and gelled into a skull, the skin shifting right after it.

"Now, Sarah," Lysander ordered, sneering at her, "unlock the cage."

Jareth descended on him. Aulis seized the opportunity to tackle the other chimera, this one so much larger than the ones he'd seen before. The lion eyes boasted an intelligence unique from the others also.

Sarah pulled herself up, staggering while she balanced herself. Closing her eyes, she removed the chain around her neck with the key attached. Holding it in her hand, she kept her eyes closed and began concentrating on summoning a crystal into the other one. Just as she was beginning to feel the air pressure above her palm solidify, Lysander pulled her to the ground.

"Give me the key, Sarah!"

Jareth slammed into Lysander's side. The two rolled inches away from her, inches away from the key. Scampering to her feet, Sarah grabbed the key and worked again on a crystal. At last the perfect sphere of a crystal weighed her palm down, and it heated. Instead of hurling it at the key, she spun and dunked it right into Lysander's ear.

Hearing his screams echo throughout the cave, Jareth briefly disappeared, only to reappear a second later behind Lysander, ramming a crystal the size of a pumpkin into his torso. He fell straight to the ground, his back scraping against the pebbly surface that formed the path leading to the Minotaur.

Finally, Sarah summoned another fire-crystal and flung it at Lysander as he struggled to rise up. Hitting him square in the face, he pawed his temples and nose to end the charring of his flesh.

"Help me!"

Jareth and Sarah both turned. Aulis lay on the ground, the chimera Sarah guessed to be the king straddled over him, ready to maul him with the massive front paws.

"No!" she shouted, running over to them. She jumped on the chimera king's back, face to face with the goat head. Bleating in surprise and at the added weight of her body, the goat head bowed down its head, preparing its horns to make short work of her. Her reflexes ever faster since coming to the Underground once again, her hands jerked out and grasped the rock-hard horns.

"Foolish king!" Lysander coughed, kicking his legs with half the strength he had before at Jareth. "Your generals and your soldiers and your human pet will all die for nothing."

Saying nothing, Jareth instead stomped right on the seared flesh on the traitor's face.

"We'll take that key off her cold corpse!" Lysander croaked between writhes. Summoning his crystal into a silvery sword, Jareth plunged it right through the body below him and ran to Sarah.

She still had hold of the horns, pulling them just enough to distract all the heads from Aulis. The snake head behind her hissed in annoyance and pain and swerved to wrap its neck around her. At just the right moment, Jareth sliced at the snake head, a slippery, saliva-filled roar of agony answering him.

The bucking body threw Sarah off of itself, all three heads choking on their own blood. She turned away right when she saw the heads beginning to intersect. This time, she could hear the bones crunch in an effort to come together to transform.

Everyone peered over the quivering body, growing a slender waistline and curvaceous hips where mounds of golden fur were before. The mane of the lion softened, curling into long auburn hair that brushed the bony shoulder blades.

"The king?" Sarah whispered to herself, leaning over the form. She hoped it was, or else the king was on the battlefield, possibly taken Pasia prisoner or worse, leaving Toby…don't think of Toby now, she told herself.

"End…me," the voice of the woman broken on the ground moaned. "End…me."

They stood over her still, shocked at the request. It reminded Sarah of the Far Eastern Samurais and Kamikazes demanding death rather than face defeat. The woman's eyes the shape of almonds remained unfocused, gazing up at the beyond, perhaps trying to figure out just where the gigantic coffin ended.

"Kill…please."

"Hold her hands down," Sarah heard herself order. Not knowing what else to do, Aulis and Jareth held down the petite hands. Closing her eyes and ignoring her racing heart, Sarah summoned a crystal, much quicker than she had been able to before, and placed it on the woman below her, the king of the horrible creatures that killed her mother and ravaged the kingdom. She then placed the key next to the crystal.

"Sarah," Aulis warned, his mouth round in surprise.

"It's all right," she said. They watched.

The crystal glowed with a brilliant white light, almost blue. Her eyes only on the key, she saw it begin to melt away, the runny material filling the entire cave with the smell of metal. The bronze substance oozed down the thin waist of the woman. At last, the crystal's rays gleamed even brighter…and then darkness.

They bent down. No crystal, no key—a pile of ash as fine as sand lay scattered on top of and between the gravelly pebbles and rock that made up the ground.

XXXXX

Toby peeked out from the leaves. Straight across from him, only the top of a citrine sun poked out over the horizon. Above it the baby blue sky was already swirling with the oncoming blackness.

"The last ones are retreating!" he heard someone call. Pressing his back against the hill as hard as he could, Toby saw a body-drenched field, some goblin, some Sidhe, and even more chimeras. The sound of rocks tumbling down the hill behind him made him jump.

"Toby?"

"You're all right!" He ran to Pasia and threw his arms around her. Her short frame sported new cuts and bruises, and her hair seemed to have developed a mind and intelligence all its own, but her eyes sparkled with tears of relief. She held him tighter when she looked out onto the field herself. She recognized so many of the faces that lay motionless along with the bodies of the enemy. Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning the endless plane for one particular face.

"Yes, I'm all right," she whispered in a monotone voice. She found Faren sticking out beneath a chimera, his sword still in the beast. The wild eyes were as blank as a fish's. She turned away and buried her face into the top of Toby's head.

"Did we win?"

"Yes, yes, I think we did." She wiped the tears forming zigzagged pink lines down her dirtied face. "I'm sure Sarah will be back here soon. We have to know about the key." Yes, she nodded to herself. The key. Faren, you don't want to have died for nothing. Sarah made sure the chimeras didn't acquire the key. She knew Sarah managed to somehow make sure that didn't happen.

"Toby!"

Sarah didn't mean for it to sound as harsh as it did. But she broke into a run when she saw Toby, not just standing but untouched except for a few minor bruises. He ran to her and she picked him up at the contact of him. Clinging him to her, she kissed his cheeks and made sure to hug him hard enough to suck all the comfort out of him.

"Sarah, I'm okay. I'm not going anywhere," he laughed, his pride already too strong to admit the relief and joy he felt at seeing her return to them. He managed to break free of her and ran to Jareth. Not tall enough to hug his waist, he went for his legs instead.

"I was so worried…the key?" Pasia asked, an arms-length away from Sarah.

"Destroyed as it should have been a long time ago," Sarah answered. "Lysander and the king are dead. I don't know if that means you've conquered their kingdom or…"

"Oh, Sarah!" Pasia threw her arms around her, tears streaming down her face. "It couldn't have been done without you! Oh, it shall be a crime to devour humans now! Yes, you and Toby, the saviors of our world, and of your world! My dear friend!" She pulled Sarah even closer. "My kingdom will honor you as long as it exists. This day shall mark the Lady Sarah Festival."

"You sure know how to make me feel good about myself."

"I'm sorry." Pasia let go of her. "I forgot how humble you are. But we will do something, rest assured."

"Where is Faren?"

"Oh…" Pasia swallowed, taking a deep breath. "He fought bravely."

"Oh." There was no need to hear anything else. It was Sarah's turn to gather in the other woman and hold onto her. "He's the one that should be honored, and all the rest that died."

"I will take on the burial and ceremony for the dead for you, Pasia," Jareth finally said, stepping forward. "I wouldn't have you list his name with the rest."  
"And it's so wonderful to see you too!" She ran to him, stretching her head back to be able to see his eyes. "The chimera kingdom is vast, Jareth. We can cut it right in half and that lush romantic forest can be ours. Hopefully we will be able to enjoy a long-standing peace now."

Jareth smiled down at her, so comforted to know she was safe and had managed to keep Toby safe. He gazed back along the horizon. He panned his surroundings, spotting Orion limping, but carrying a rejoicing Hoggle on his shoulders. The dwarf held his arm in a manner to suggest it had been broken, but the prideful, contented face told Jareth all would be well with him. Looks like they managed to form a nice camaraderie, he thought, and for which he accredited himself. What is that quote from the Aboveground? "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship?"

Friends. At the very best, that's what he would have to call himself and Sarah. Sarah. Where was she? He turned his head in both directions, but she was gone. Sighing to himself, he knew after the ceremonies honoring the numerous dead and adding onto his kingdom, he would have to escort her back, never see her again and go what seemed another lifetime without being with her. Well, every rose has its thorn, he thought, remembering a song from the Aboveground that caught on in the goblin kingdom. Maybe it was the price of such a victory, to have made himself vulnerable enough to admit to her he loved her and for her not only leaving him again, but not even able to say how she felt about him. He fought the growing tear welling up in his eye, and then felt himself fading away.

"I wish the goblin king would come to me," was all he heard.

A/N: It's not over yet! There are a few loose ends that need tied up, so don't you worry. Please read and leave a review. I can't improve or feel an ounce of self-esteem in regards to my Labyrinth-writing abilities without reviews. Wish I had created the whole thing.


	16. A Whole New World

**A/N: All right. Here we are, the epilogue. It's been quite a ride. Please be sure to leave a review.**

Jareth saw the old country house that belonged to Garnet a few yards in front of him with a lone figure sitting out in front of it in the emerald grass, her knees brought up to her chest. How small she looked compared to the widespread fields and the large stone house. But he was tired of watching her. He had watched her for too long.

_He was flying through the cloud covered sky, deciding to perch on a simple wooden sign overlooking a church. In spite of the clouds, it really was a pleasant day, but pleasant enough for a wedding?_

_He watched the bride and groom exit the church, a little older than he expected, but still an attractive pair. Stopping to help the bride pick up the train of her gown, a swarm of bubbles overwhelmed them. His owl eyes sparkled at the long line of relatives and friends blowing on their devices that released the bubbles and the laughter and kisses accompanying them._

_Then a flash of lilac caught his eye. Behind them, a young girl __with an ebony braid that extended to her waist and adorned with lilies forced a smile when the bride and groom turned to put their arms around her and kiss her creamy cheeks. There was such depth in those eyes, such brooding going on under the mask of cheerful compliance._

There had been no…feelings then; she was only a little girl, probably only twelve or thirteen years old, but he watched her every time he visited the Aboveground, which became more and more often the more she grew, the more he learned about his lilac girl with a passion for stories and fantasy and felt everyone around her existed only to make her own life a living hell. She made him laugh then, and then she'd found the book.

He didn't even know the origin of the book and still didn't, but one day he saw her reading out loud from it in a park, adopting a bombastic tone for the narrations. Fortunately she did all the voices, which made up for her strange choice for the narrative parts. His head cocked at her voice, his feathers ruffled at the ingenious facial expressions she used for playing the different characters—he loved it. He loved what she was doing to him. He loved her. He didn't know how he would ever be able to introduce himself to her, but she'd taken care of all of that on her own. Just the knowledge that she ran the Labyrinth, in the same world he was in, intoxicated him.

And now she sat huddled in a field all alone.

"Sarah." She didn't turn.

"I suppose this house now belongs to me," she said.

"It would seem that way. I'm positive she left it to you." He wanted to disappear back to his own home, to forget about her and the fact he allowed her to reject him twice.

"Which is funny because I don't even have a key for it now," she snorted. "The answer to your riddle is stars."

"Oh. Yes, you're right," he let a laugh escape. "You could always create a key for it. You'll need one whether you decide to sell it or…stay in it."

"Jareth, do you want to sit, or is that not a kingly thing to do?"

He took a seat next to her on the field overlooking the house.

"Did you call me here to sit, or should I start acting kingly again?" It was rude and he knew it, but if he was going to forget her, it would suit him to detach now.

"I…I need a key to stay in the house," she said, all strung together in one sentence. "I don't know what I'll do here, but I don't think I can go back to the life I had before. You know what I did before? I work at a library to put myself through school. I take the books other people read and put them back on the shelves."

"Stimulating. But it needs to be done."

"It does, but I don't date, I don't have any friends." Her voice rambled now. "I study to be able to translate ancient languages, and there's a whole mess of them here, so if not everyone here knows how to read ancient goblin or whatever, I've had some experience with it. Do…" She turned her head, taken aback how close they were, their foreheads almost touching. She locked eyes with him. "Do they have jobs like that here?"

"They do. Is that what you want? To stay here?"

Sarah melted at the guarded optimism in his voice. He still wanted her in spite of how skittish she had been before. She scooted closer, letting her forehead press against his.

"Would you want me to?"

"It's, it's up to you, Sarah. You have to do what will make you happy."

It was stupid to expect a lavish speech declaring everlasting love and devotion. He wasn't like that. She liked his laconic periods, something they had in common, so whenever they did say something especially clever, everyone in the room took notice of it.

"You make me happy," she whispered. Her hand rested on his knee as she leaned in more, her lips a teasing distance away from his. "I would stay even if you didn't want me to, just to hope that someday you would. You know, because goblins live a long time. You might change your mind, and then I would be right there and you would know where to find me…"

He let himself be reeled in again by her and met her lips. She clung to him, safer with his arms around her than anywhere else. She kissed him back, her hands finding his. She let herself fall back onto the grass, taking him down with her. She untied the straps that fastened his vest, revealing a soft cotton shirt far too familiar. It had to be out of the way.

"I love you," she whispered in his ear. "I love you more than I've ever loved anyone."

He smiled, savoring the knowledge his Sarah busied herself unbuttoning his shirt, her fingertips trailing down his lean chest. It was time to give her the same sensation. Quicker than he even guessed he could, his hands burrowed behind her shirt, scaling up her waist and up to petite breasts. Stopping to linger there, they escalated up to feel the delicate skin just below her prominent collarbone. They trailed back down to her breasts and cupped them, kissing her harder. The tantalizing feeling of her torso jerking against him caused his eyes to roll back.

"Sarah, I'm sorry, but I, I need you," he gasped, fighting to inhale.

Without saying anything, Sarah wiggled out of the shirt already bunched up and askew.

XXXXX

So many people sat in the finely gilded chairs in the ballroom. Sarah gulped. Perhaps Lysander…the late Lysander, she reminded herself, made one too many comments about her simplicity. Graced in a silky scarlet gown, she spotted Orion and Aulis seated near the front. Making sure all the guests were occupied in conversation, she made a beeline straight for them.

"Lady Sarah, please sit with us," Orion said, pointing to the chair on the other side of Aulis. "It would be an honor."

"Thanks. You look very dashing, Hoggle."

Hoggle clicked his buckled shoes together and beamed at her.

"Oh, well, I'm just supposed to get a medal and all, so…"

"…Anything I can get for you, my dear?"Sarah turned.

"Aschenputt! You look fantastic." She fingered the lacy sleeve of the rosy-colored gown her maid wore. "Where have you been?"

"We've been in hiding, my lady. All of us have. But you've defeated the chimeras. That's…groves?"

"Groovy?" Sarah tried, suppressing the urge to laugh at such an outdated expression.

"Sarah," Hoggle said, tugging at her. "You haven't introduced me."

"Oh, sorry. Hoggle, this is Aschenputt, my chambermaid. Aschenputt, this is Hoggle, a very dear friend of mine. He's brave, kind…"

"Handsome," he whispered to her, winking at Aschenputt. Sarah swallowed, her eyes darting to and fro at the pair.

"Hoggle, why doesn't Aschenputt sit next to you?" Aulis offered. "I'm sure she would love to hear your adventures."

"Thanks," Sarah said to him after Aschenputt squeezed past Aulis, then her, then Orion, then Hoggle to take the seat next to him. "I didn't want to get caught in the middle of something."

"You look absolutely stunning," he said. "That red…I would have said you were your mother walking in." He paused at the sad smile on her face. "This is a very proud day for you and your whole family. Are they here?"

"Yeah. Karen and Dad are on the other side there," she said, pointing, "and Toby's with them."

The listing of the names of the dead lasted an eternity, as read by Jareth, keeping his promise to Pasia who sat behind him on a platform. Maybe it was only she that had the ability, but she saw the pain in his eyes. He traded places with Pasia, whose small frame approached the font of the platform, her long blonde curls pulled back and an emerald and black gown. Hoggle and Orion received medals, followed by Aulis. To her pleasant surprise, Pasia called Toby up and pinned a medal to his gray suit. He ran back down the platform grinning at her.

"If Lady Sarah would come up, please."

Sarah took a breath, gliding up to the platform, her feet clearly knowing what she didn't. Looking out, she found the supportive faces of her father…because he was still her father…and Karen and Toby, giving her the courage to smile out at the crowd.

"Lady Sarah, words can scarcely describe the service you have done for the Underground, or compensate the loss you have suffered." Pasia stopped to catch her breath. Two women with stage fright, Sarah thought. "The Sidhe are not ones known for words anyway." She held for some laughs from the audience. Humbled nods formed a wave that extended to the very back row. "What honor can we bestow upon you? If I may, we have procured the will of your mother, the great General Garnet. She has bequeathed to you her estate and all her assets. Her name shall be honored as well. But this is all we can offer you."

Sarah saw Jareth rise from his chair and approach both of them. Pasia suddenly grinned and clasped her hands together. Her eyes widened at the tall, Spartan-like goblin king falling to his knees.

"What? The men of your world stole this from us," he said, loud enough for only her to hear. "Sarah, there is no way to repay you for what you have done except to offer to share this kingdom with you."

Tears ran down her cheeks.

"I love you, and I'm not always able to say what should be said, but…I'm asking you to marry me."

Sarah fell to her own knees and threw her arms around him.

_This is the story, recorded in ancient goblin to please the late __Erol__, father of Sarah, of the Underground's first human queen. It is a great mystery of the Underground as to why she never reverted back to goblin, but the kingdom did not seem to mind. She lived with her family, preserving the ancient texts__, visiting her human family quite often._

_Adventures did come the way of the goblin king and queen, but few compared to the great strife against the chimeras. The estate of __Erol__ and Garnet, parents of Sarah, went to General Aulis, who later married Queen __Pasia__ of the __Sidhe__, daughter of __Pogyt__ and __Hydana__. I would have gone had I not entered my confinement. Fortunately, little Bella, daughter of __Jareth__ and Sarah, was born without trouble and we could reunite as a family once more._

_Thus ends the present history of the goblin kingdom, ending with the __Aboveground__ date of 1994. All that has been told is true and told in the hopes of preserving the ancient languages and securing our history in the hearts of our subjects and to any readers anxious to know what happened after events of Queen Sarah's run of the Labyrinth._

_Recorded by Queen Sarah, daughter of __Erol__ and Garnet_


End file.
